THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 



By CLARA E. LAUGHLIN 

Felicity 

When Joy Begins 

Divided 

MlLADI 

The Evolution of a Girl's Ideal 
Stories of Authors' Loves 
The Lady in Gray 




Copyright, 1891, by M. P. Rice. 



Abraham Lincoln 
"With malice toward none, with charity for all. 



The Death of Lincoln 



The Story of Booth's Plot, His Deed 
and the Penalty 

By 
CLARA E. LAUGHLIN 



Illustrated from Photographs 




New York 

Doubleday, Page & Company 

1909 






D k 



\ 



.5 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1909 



ism- coin?* 



IT! 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Cooh's Received 

JAN 2b 1909 

CopynRnt tntry 
8lA3S o- XXc, No. 

J *"" cowy a- 



TO 
FRANCES BENJAMIN JOHNSTON 



CONTENTS 



Part One. The Plot 
Part Two. The Deed 
Part Three. The Penalty 



PAGE 

3 

67 
119 



APPENDICES 

I. Feeling Against Lincoln .... 201 

II. Booth in Canada 203 

III. Confederate Complicity .... 205 

IV. The Leenea Letters . , . . .211 

V. Dr. Mudd's Statement . . . .214 

VI. Rockville Lecture of John H. Surratt . . 222 

VII. The Possibility of Capture . . . .250 

VIII. John Y. Beall 256 

IX. Lincoln's Last Journey .... 257 

X. Lincoln's Last Speech .... 259 

XI. Lincoln's Forebodings of a Tragic Death . 262 

XII. Lincoln and the Negro Messenger . . 266 

XIII. Dana and Thompson ..... 267 

XIV. Mr. George Ashmun 269 

XV. "Our American Cousin" .... 270 



Vlll 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 



XVI. Atzerodt's Statement . . . ' . 283 

XVII. The Trial of John Surratt . . .286 

XVIII. Major Rathbone's Statement . . 289 

XIX. Harry Hawk's Account . . .293 

XX. Affidavit of Miss Harris . . .294 

XXI. Booth in Boston 296 

XXII. Letter of William T. Clark . . .298 

XXIII. Despatches of the Night . . .301 

XXIV. Statement of Mr. Field, Assistant Secre- 

tary of the Treasury . . . 303 
XXV. Southern Horror of Booth's Deed . . 309 

XXVI. The Awards 312 

XXVII. Trial Attendance 316 

XXVIII. Spangler's Statement . . . .317 
XXIX. Mrs. Surratt and John Nothey . . 322 

XXX. John P. Brophy 324 

XXXI. The Holt-Johnson Controversy . . 327 
XXXII. Johnson's Order for the Execution of 
Payne, Atzerodt, Herold, and Mrs. 

Surratt 332 

XXXIII. Johnson's Remark About "The Nest 

that Hatched the Egg" . . .333 
XXXIV. Johnson's Denial of Habeas Corpus 

Writ to Mrs. Surratt . . 335 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Abraham Lincoln Frontispiece 



PAGE 



Map Showing the Routes of Proposed Abduction of 

Lincoln and Actual Flight of Booth .... 4 " 

John Wilkes Booth 6 , 

The National Hotel, Washington, D. C 28 

Ford's Theatre, Washington, D. C 50 

Mrs. Abraham Lincoln 74 

Play Bill of Ford's Theatre 78 

Laura Keene 90 

Abraham Lincoln about 1865 92 

Contemporary Print of the Assassination of Lincoln . . 96^ 

Lincoln and His Son, Tad 104 

The Death of Abraham Lincoln 114 

The House in which Lincoln Died 120 

The Alley Behind Ford's Theatre 122 

Lincoln's House at Springfield, 111., Draped at Time of 

His Death 126- 

Lincoln's Funeral Car and Hearse 130 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

New York City Hall when Lincoln's Body Lay There in 

State 134- 

Contemporary Print of General U. S. Grant at the Tempo- 
rary Tomb of Abraham Lincoln 140 

The Lincoln Monument at Springfield, 111. . . . 144 ' 

Catacomb and Sarcophagus 144 

Booth's Escape 150 

The Capture and Death of Booth 150 

Boston Corbett 152 

The Military Court that Tried the Assassins . . . 172 / 

Four Conspirators Who Were Hanged . . . 190 r 

Four Conspirators Who Were Not Hanged . . .192 

Execution of the Four Conspirators 194 ' 



PART I 

THE PLOT 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 



THE PLOT 

A BOUT the twelfth of September, 1864, a young man 
*■ helping to thresh wheat in a field near Hookstown, 
Maryland, had a letter brought to him. In it was either 
a twenty-dollar or a fifty-dollar bill. 1 After reading the 
letter and pocketing the money, the young man remarked 
laughingly, but not without a bit of swaggering importance, 
that he was "flush," and that something big would be 
heard of one of these days. 

It was! The young man was in "a plot" which at that 
time would have seemed to any sober-minded person who 
might have known of it about as serious as the back-lot 

1 "The Assassination of President Lincoln, and the Trial of the Conspirators," com- 
piled and arranged by Benn Pitman, Recorder to the Military Commission. Pub- 
lished by Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, Cincinnati and New York, 1865. The Pitman 
record of the Conspiracy Trial is the one hereinafter referred to, as that to which 
most persons have access. The record made for the Philadelphia Inquirer and pub- 
lished by T. B. Peterson, Philadelphia, in 1865, and the report made for the Associated 
Press and published by Barclay & Co., Philadelphia, 1865, are "unedited" by the Bureau 
of Military Justice, and show some sharp discrepancies from the Pitman version; but 
for the reason that they are not everywhere available they have not been made the basis 
of most of these citations. For authority on Samuel Arnold's letter, and its enclosure, 
see the testimony of Littleton P. D. Newman, Conspiracy Trial, page 239. 



4 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

plottings of exuberant boys bent on the extermination of 
Indians; it was a plot to kidnap the President of the 
United States and hold him for a ransom. Nobody knows 
how nearly the absurd plot came to accomplishment, but 
all the world has heard of the conspiracy which resulted 
in the death of Lincoln. The young man who got that 
letter was sufficiently connected with the President's death 
to pay a hideous penalty for it. Just how he and his 
fellows came into their connection with the great tragedy 
of the nation we shall now try to see. 

The young man's name was Samuel Arnold, and he 
had been a soldier in the Confederate Army. After a long 
illness, however, he did not return to the service, but stayed 
with his people in and near Baltimore. Sam was a clerk 
when he could get clerical work to do, but either the times 
were bad for obtaining work of that sort or Sam was bad at 
finding it, for in the summer of '64 he was unemployed 
except for the desultory help he gave a farmer-brother 
near Hookstown. 

Early in September, Sam and two old schoolmates of 
his had met at Barnum's Hotel in Baltimore. 1 One of the 
schoolmates was a small, quiet, rather delicate-looking 
young man, with thick black hair, heavy black moustache, 

1 Arnold's statement to Eaton G. Horner C. T. p. 235. It was written and delivered 
by William McPhail to Stanton (C. T. p. 236), who did not allow it to be put in 
evidence. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 5 

a small black imperial, and nervous black eyes that often 
looked sad. He, also, had been a Confederate soldier, 
but had taken the oath of allegiance in June, 1863, and 
since then had been in the feed and produce business with 
his brother William, in Baltimore and Washington. His 
name was Michael O'Laughlin. 

The third of these young fellows, who had been close 
friends for a dozen years or more — ever since their little- 
boy days — was grown quite out of the class of the other 
two. He was brilliantly beautiful, very talented, very suc- 
cessful, very much sought after. l Although barely twenty- 
six years old, he had an income from his profession of about 
twenty thousand dollars a year. He was tall and full of 
slender grace; his features were classic in their perfectness; 
his big black eyes were teasing, tender, laughing, bewitch- 
ing; a crown of slightly curling jet-black hair was worn 
pushed boyishly back from a brow of rare intellectual and 
physical beauty. He was elegant in his dress, blithe and 
winsome in his manner. Indeed, he was only too winsome 
— too easy to love and too hard to scold; too quick to charm 
and too charming to be judged. He was generous and kind, 
affectionate and gay. His name was John Wilkes Booth. 



1 During a successful engagement of John W. Booth's in Boston, "women of all ages, 
and degrees pressed in crowds before the Tremont House to see him depart." " Life 
of J. W. Booth," by George Alfred Townsend, published by Dick and Fitzgerald, New 
York, 1 866, p. 24. 



6 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

John, the youngest but one of the ten children born to 
the celebrated tragedian, Junius Brutus Booth and his 
wife, Mary Ann, was named for his paternal great-grand- 
mother's cousin, John Wilkes, parliamentarian, lord 
mayor of London, and political agitator. Junius Brutus 
the elder died in 1852. He acted up to the very last, and 
died on tour in the West, but for years before his death his 
great mind had been unbalanced by his intemperate habits, 
so that the only father little John Booth ever knew was a 
madman, the wreck of a splendid genius, a lovable 
personality. 

Of the six children who survived their father, three 
became famous members of his profession, but John 
Wilkes was universally considered the most gifted of the 
family, though a severe bronchial affection threatened his 
voice and, consequently, his future on the stage. He was 
the idol of his mother's heart and was, in turn, exceedingly 
fond of her — so fond that he made her a promise it was 
very hard for him to keep : a promise that he would never 
take up arms against the Union she and all her other 
children stanchly upheld. 

John had spent the happiest, most impressionable years 
of his young professional life in the South, notably at 
Richmond, Virginia, where he was a member of John T. 
Ford's stock company and a warm favourite in and out of 




Collection of Americana, F. H. Meserve. 

John Wilkes Booth 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 7 

the theatre. In 1859 he had been a volunteer soldier and 
did his part to put down treason by standing guard at the 
foot of the scaffold whereon John Brown was hanged. 
Four years later the Government that had put Brown to 
death for attempting to free the slaves made a new defini- 
tion of treason : made it treasonable to resist the freeing 
of the slaves. John Booth did not accept the new defini- 
tion. For him, despite the tears and protests of his family, 
right remained with the South; and although he had 
promised his dear mother he would not take up arms 
against the Union, John did not try to stifle his passionate 
sympathy with the Southern cause, his burning ardour to 
do something toward its success. 

In Barnum's Hotel, Baltimore, that September day in 
'64, the three young men talked of the war and soberly 
discussed the repeated reverses of the Confederate armies, 
the steady swelling of Northern prisons with thousands 
upon thousands of Southern prisoners. 1 

It was then that John unfolded a stupendous scheme. 
So far as we know, he had conceived it quite recently and 
had not mentioned it to any one until that day. It was a 
plan to seize the President of the United States, hurry him 
out of Washington, down through intensely disloyal 
counties of Maryland to the Potomac, ferry him across into 

1 See Appendix I: Feeling about Lincoln in the North. 



8 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Virginia, and carry him to Richmond, there to turn him 
over to the Confederate authorities to be held on their 
own terms — either the termination of the war, or the 
exchange of one President for all Southern prisoners held 
by the North. 

The two young men to whom this wild scheme was 
unfolded, and who were then and thereupon invited to 
become party to it, must have gasped at its audacity. But 
John explained how easy it would be. The President was 
impatient of being guarded, and often went about Washing- 
ton unattended or with a single guard. It would be the 
easiest thing in the world for three or four fellows to seize 
him — say on one of his visits to the Soldiers' Home, out 
Seventh Street — thrust him into a closed carriage, drive 
rapidly into Maryland, and hasten to Richmond. Or, the 
capture might be made on one of his returns, unguarded, 
from the War Office to the White House, late at night. 
If seized then, he could be hurried down through the 
gardens of the White House to an old house on Seventeenth 
Street near the confluence of the Tyber and Potomac rivers. 
This house, built in 1820, had a cellar, reached by a trap- 
door, which was once used for a slave prison. There 
were "two acres of grounds around the house, filled with 
high trees and close shrubbery, and a high brick wall along 
the street, and any cries from it would be effectually 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 9 

drowned long before reaching the street." 1 Even the 
President of the United States, it seemed, might have been 
held prisoner there, close under the shadow of the White 
House, and spirited thence when opportunity offered. It 
was a daring plan, of course. But think of the glory there 
would be in it! Tt would probably end this hideously 
bloody war; and when the grateful Confederacy found 
itself victorious, there would surely be handsome rewards 
for the brave boys who had saved it. John was eloquent, 
enthusiastic, seemed to understand the situation thor- 
oughly; of course the other boys "joined." And of course, 
after that, Sam Arnold was less and less inclined to look 
for steady employment and more and more disturbingly 
given to talk of certain "prospects" about which he was 
mysteriously vague. The money in his letter of a week 
later was doubtless from his friend John, in consideration 
of Sam's temporary need while great fortune awaited him. 
On the twenty-seventh of September John went to 
Franklin, in the oil region of Pennsylvania, where he had 
invested six thousand dollars. 3 Every young man in those 
days speculated in oil. A few "struck it rich," most of 
them sunk their money in wells and got nothing out but 
experience. John was one of the latter. For nine or ten 

1 The trial of the assassins, as reported for the Philadelphia Daily Inquirer and 
published by T. B. Peterson and Brothers, Philadelphia, 1865, P- *7- 
3 C. T. p. 45, Joseph H. Simonds. 



10 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

months he had been dabbling in oil, but now he was 
determined to stop; so he closed up his interests by con- 
veying part of his land to his brother, Junius Brutus, and 
part to his business agent, Joseph H. Simonds. 

Just a month later John was in Montreal. A great 
deal of testimony offered at the trial of his fellow-con- 
spirators in May, '65, in the effort to prove Confederate 
complicity in the murder of President Lincoln, made it 
appear that John Booth, John Surratt, Lewis Payne, 
Davy Herold, spent much of the fall and winter of '64-'65 
in Montreal. But there is no reliable evidence that Booth 
was there after October 1 — the register of St. Lawrence 
Hall does not once contain his name after that date — and 
neither is there reliable evidence that any of the other 
conspirators was there at all, except John Surratt, who 
went there in April. 

St. Lawrence Hall was then the leading hotel of Montreal 
and was, as such, liberally patronized by actors and by 
those prominent Southerners who, by their authorized 
activity in the Confederate cause, were known as the 
"Canada Cabinet" of the Confederacy. John Booth 
knew these men well, naturally; they had many sympathies 
in common. His conversations with some of them were 
excitably described at the time of the conspirators' trial 

1 See Appendix II; Note summarizing evidence about Booth in Canada. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 11 

as "confidential," but whatever the confidence may have 
been about there is not a scintilla of reliable evidence 
that it had anything to do with a plot against President 
Lincoln. 1 

If the men of the Canada Cabinet listened to John 
Booth's plans for the release of the Southern prisoners, 
they evidently told him nothing of their own plans to the 
same end. They and the "Sons of Liberty" (a secret 
organization of Northern Democrats who hated the war 
and urged resistance to the draft) had conspired to make 
a raid on Camp Douglas in Chicago, where nearly nine 
thousand rebels were imprisoned. This raid was to have 
occurred on the twenty-ninth of August, the day of the 
assembling in Chicago of the National Democratic Con- 
vention. That plan had come to nothing, owing to the 
Government having been forewarned. But on the night 
of Election Day there was to be an attack made on Camp 
Douglas, the intent being to release and arm the prisoners, 
"cut the telegraph wires, burn the railroad depots, seize 
the banks and stores containing arms and ammunition, 
take possession of the city, and commence a campaign for 
the release of other prisoners of war in Illinois and 
Indiana."* This, if successful, would rather have fore- 

1 See Appendix III: Note on Southern complicity. 

2 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, vol. xxxix, part 
iii, p. 698; vol. xlv, part i, p. 1078. 



12 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

stalled John's little plan, but it, too, fell through because 
word of it had "leaked" and the Government was 
prepared. The Confederacy's Canada Cabinet — or part 
of it, at least — had other plans, too, for ending the 
war in November, '64, of which John Booth does 
not seem to have been appraised. But of those, more 
presently. 

In October, John was in Montreal. We know that for 
a certainty because on the twenty-seventh he bought at the 
Ontario Bank of Montreal a bill of exchange on Messrs. 
Glyn, Mills & Co., London, England, for sixty-one 
pounds twelve shillings and ten pence sterling. This 
left him a balance of four hundred and fifty-five dollars in 
the bank, where he kept a small account. He told the 
teller of the Ontario Bank, when he bought the bill of 
exchange, that he was going to run the blockade. 1 He 
never ran it, the bill of exchange was found on him when he 
died, just six months later, and the four hundred and fifty- 
five dollars were still to his credit, untouched. What he 
seems to have been providing against was the possibility 
of the Confederate Government refusing to take advan- 
tage of his "capture" and his having to flee to the British 
West Indies or to Europe. 

John was a favourite in Montreal and always had a good 



1 C. T. p. 46, Robert Anson Campbell; p. 93, Everton J. Conger. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 13 

time there. When he played in the old Theatre Royal 
on Cote Street, he used to hurry away from the theatre 
after the performance, and make all possible haste back 
to St. Lawrence Hall, where he always found a little 
crowd of good fellows waiting for him. The billiard-room 
of the St. Lawrence was run by Joe Dion, the champion 
billiardist of America, and evening after evening he and 
John Booth were wont to play before an enthusiastic little 
"gallery" of newspaper men, actors, and men about town. 1 
The Southern gentleman is usually a good billiard player, 
and without doubt the "Canada Cabinet" contributed to 
the "gallery" on nearly every occasion. If "conspiring" 
was done, it must have been in two rival camps, curiously 
at cross purposes. 

Where John Booth was on Ejection Day, November 8th, 
we do not know, but on the evening of the next day he 
arrived in Washington and registered at the National Hotel 
on Pennsylvania Avenue, not far from the Capitol. He 
must have been brimming full of bitterness that day over 
the news of Lincoln's re-election, but if he so expressed him- 
self to any one we do not know it. He was universally 
known as a Southern sympathizer, but even to his closest 
associates, with the exception of those few he took into his 
plans, he seems never to have delivered himself of any 

1 Told the present writer by Mr. William Jarvis of the Montreal Star, who was 
usually present at these games. 



14 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

sentiments which prepared them in the least degree for 
the awful deed his plotting finally led him to. 

It was probably on Saturday, the twelfth of November, 
that John went down into Charles County, Maryland, with 
a letter of introduction to a Dr. Queen living there. Dr. 
Queen's son-in-law, when examined about it months after- 
ward, thought that the letter was from a man in Montreal 
named Martin. No one was able to remember the exact 
date of that fateful visit to Charles County, but every one 
agreed that it was early in November. We know that 
John was there Saturday — in part, at least — and Sunday 
and Monday morning. And we know that he left the 
National Hotel early on Friday morning, the eleventh, and 
returned early Monday evening. ' If he had lived to be 
tried for the outcome of his plotting, the date of that first 
visit to Charles County would have been of sensational 
importance. Even as it is, the date was crucial, as we shall 
see. 8 John may have gone to Baltimore on Friday, or he 
may have been "prospecting around" in other parts of 
Charles and Prince George counties before hunting up 
Dr. Queen. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of Dr. 
Queen's house, John seems to have encountered the 
doctor's son, Joseph Queen, who took the stranger home. 1 

i C T. p. 46, G. W. Bunker. 

9 See Appendix IV. Note on the "Leenea" letters. 

* C. T. p. 178, John C. Thompson. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 15 

After John's letter had been presented and he had been 
introduced to the members of Dr. Queen's family, he told 
them he was in Maryland looking over farm lands with a 
view to purchase. He asked, also, about horses for sale 
in that neighbourhood. 

The Queens liked him, of course; everybody liked him. 
And they asked him to stay with them over Sunday. He 
accepted, and on Sunday morning went to church with 
them. In the dooryard of the little country church — 
St. Mary's Catholic Church, near Bryantown — they met 
a neighbour of the Queens', Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, a young 
physician and a member of one of the prominent families 
of the county. Mr. John C. Thompson, Dr. Queen's 
son-in-law, introduced their guest to Dr. Mudd. It was 
a fateful meeting for the young physician. John — whose 
beauty and fame created quite a stir in the little congre- 
gation — asked Dr. Mudd if he knew of any one who had 
a good riding-horse for sale; and Dr. Mudd replied that 
his next neighbour, George Gardiner, had one, which he 
offered to take Mr. Booth to see. 1 John accepted, and on 
Sunday evening, just after the family and guests of Dr. 
Mudd had finished supper, John arrived from Dr. Queen's 
house, seven or eight miles away. Mrs. Mudd hospitably 
got a special supper for Mr. Booth — who doubtless pro- 

1 C. T. p. 71, Thomas L. Gardiner. 



16 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

tested very charmingly at the trouble he was making — 
and after he had eaten, John joined the family circle in 
the parlour and remained there in general conversation 
until bedtime. 1 He stayed at Dr. Mudd's that night 
and after breakfast the next morning, host and guest went 
over to Squire Gardiner's, a quarter of a mile away. John 
asked the squire for a good driving-horse, saying he desired 
to go about the country in a buggy and look at land. But 
Gardiner had only one good driving-horse, and that he 
would not part with. He had, though, a fairly good saddle- 
horse, a large, dark bay, blind of one eye, which he would 
sell at a bargain. John bought that, saying it would do, 
as he would need it for only a short time, anyway.' The 
horse was delivered to him at Bryantown that afternoon, 
and he may have ridden it into Washington, or he may not; 
we do not know anything more about that one-eyed horse 
until January, when we have trace of it in a livery stable on 
Sixth Street, Washington. 

On Wednesday, the sixteenth of November, John went 
to New York, where he remained for nearly a month. 1 
Edwin Booth and his brother-in-law, John Sleeper 
Clarke, the eminent comedian who married Asia Booth, 

1 "The Life of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd," edited by his daughter, Miss Nettie Mudd, 
published by the Neale Publishing Company, New York and Washington, 1906, p. 29, 
Mrs. Mudd's statement. 

2 C T. p. 71, Thomas L. Gardiner. 

8 C. T. p. 46, Bunker, also p. 44, Samuel K. Chester. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 17 

were then in the second season of their joint management 
of the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, opposite 
Bond Street. Clarke was playing his engagement there 
in the early fall, and Edwin was preparing his notable 
version of "Hamlet," with which he was to open his season 
on November 26th. On Friday evening, November 
25th, Edwin Booth gave a performance for the benefit 
of the fund to raise a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park. 
The play selected was " Julius Csesar," and announce- 
ments of the event promised that "the evening will be 
made memorable by the appearance in the same piece 
of the three sons of the great Booth, Junius Brutus, 
Edwin, and John Wilkes." Junius Brutus appeared 
as Cassius, Edwin as Brutus, and John Wilkes as Marc 
Antony. It was, so far as is known, the only occasion 
on which the three brothers ever appeared together, 
and their proud mother watched them from a stage 
box. 1 

She was a happy mother, just then, for she was seeing 
more of her children than at almost any other time since 
they were all too little to leave her. 

During the performance there was a cry of fire, smoke 
began to fill the theatre, and the pleading of Edwin barely 
averted a panic in the audience of three thousand persons 

1 "Life of Edwin Booth," by William Winter, published by the Macmillan Company, 
New York, 1894, p. 34. 



18 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

or more. 1 The Winter Garden was not on fire, but the 
Lafarge House, next door, was. It was one of the centres 
of a vast incendiary plot to burn New York City. The 
Astor House, the Fifth Avenue, Metropolitan, St. Nicholas, 
United States, Everett, Lafarge, Howard, Hanaford, 
Belmont, New England, St. James, and Tammany 
hotels, and Barnum's Museum, were prepared for destruc- 
tion with phosphorus and turpentine, but the fires were, 
happily, soon put out. Months afterward, John Booth 
must needs be charged with complicity in this atrocious 
business — charged with bringing fire and hideous death 
upon the building where his idolized old mother sat 
beaming with pride and happiness on her three gifted 
boys — but he might as justifiably be charged with the 
burning of Rome while Nero fiddled. What is, however, 
unhappily almost beyond doubt, is the guilt of Jacob 
Thompson, of Mississippi, who had been Secretary of 
the Interior in Buchanan's Cabinet, and was the Con- 
federacy's most active agent at large. In a letter of 
December 3rd to J. P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary 
of War, Thompson lamented the failure to burn New 
York and admitted his complicity in the attempt. Thomp- 
son may have argued that this was in retaliation for the 
Dahlgren affair; but if Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, who 



1 O. R. Series i, vol. xliii, part ii, p. 934. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 19 

was killed in command of a detachment of cavalry in an 
unsuccessful raid on Richmond, March 4, '64, had any 
high Federal authority for his plan, as outlined in papers 
found on him, to "release the Federal prisoners on Belle 
Isle and in Richmond, and furnish them with oakum and 
turpentine to burn 'the hateful city,' while his own men 
were employed in killing Jefferson Davis and his Cab- 
inet," there is no proof of it; and one can only feel that 
to Davis and Lee, and the real leaders of the Confederacy, 
the contemplated deed of November 25th, in New York, 
was as "barbarous and inhuman a plot" as Lee charac- 
terized Dahlgren's. 1 No sane historian of to-day believes 
that the leaders of either side were capable of such bar- 
barian warfare; but then, in the heat of war, men believed 
anything of other men opposing them. New York was 
a wildly excited city on the morning of November 26th, 
and the position of John Booth in his intensely loyal 
household could not have been a pleasant one at break- 
fast that day. As a rule, politics were tabooed in Edwin's 
house when John was there, but it is hardly likely that 
the news of that morning passed without comment; 
that the Southerners were not charged with plotting, and 
that John indignantly denied it. This we may surmise, 
but all we know of the political talk between the brothers 

1 "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850," by James Ford Rhodes, 
published by the Macmillan Company, New York, vol. v, pp. 514, 515. 



20 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

during that visit is that Edwin told John he had voted 
for Lincoln's re-election, and John said he feared that 
Lincoln — probably in the event of the war's successful 
termination — would be made "King of America." 1 

What John could not say he wrote. Some time during 
his stay in New York he wrote a long letter, which he 
left for safe keeping with his brother-in-law, John Sleeper 
Clarke : 

, , 1864. 



My dear Sir: You may use this as you think best. 
But as some may wish to know when, who and why, and 
as I know not how to direct, I give it (in the words of 
your master) " To whom it may concern": 

Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my 
motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting 
condemnation of the North. 

I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union 
beyond expression. For four years I have waited, hoped, 
and prayed for the dark clouds to break, for the restora- 
tion of our former sunshine. To wait longer would be 
a crime. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have 
proved as idle as my hopes. God's will be done. I 
go to see and share the bitter end. 

I have ever held the South were right. The very 
nomination of Abraham Lincoln, four years ago, spoke 
plainly of war — war upon Southern rights and institu- 
tions. His election proved it. "Await an overt act." 
Yes, till you are bound and plundered. What folly. 
The South was not wise. Who thinks of arguments 

1 "Lettersof Edwin Booth," edited by Edwina Booth Grossmann, published by the 
Century Company, New York, 1894, p. 237. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 21 

and patience when the finger of his enemy presses on 
the trigger? In a foreign war I, too, could say, "country, 
right or wrong." But in a struggle such as ours (where 
the brother tries to pierce the brother's heart) for God's 
sake, choose the right. When a country like this spurns 
justice from her side she forfeits the allegiance of every 
honest freeman, and should leave him untrammelled by 
any fealty soever, to act as his conscience may approve. 

People of the North, to hate tyranny, to love liberty 
and justice, to strike at wrong and oppression, was the 
teaching of our fathers. The study of our early history 
will not let me forget this, and may it never. 

This country was formed for the white, not for the 
black, man. And looking upon African slavery from the 
same standpoint held by the noble framers of our Consti- 
tution, I, for one, have ever considered it one of the 
greatest blessings (both for themselves and us) that 
God ever bestowed upon a favoured nation. Witness 
heretofore our wealth and power, witness their elevation 
and enlightenment above their race elsewhere. I have 
lived among it most of my life, and have seen less harsh 
treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the 
North from father to son. Yet heaven knows, no one 
would be more willing to do for the Negro race than I, 
could I but see a way to better their condition. 

But Lincoln's policy is only preparing the way for 
their total annihilation. The South are not, nor have they 
been, fighting for the continuation of slavery. The first 
battle of Bull Run did away with that idea. Their 
causes since the war have been noble and greater far 
than those that urged our fathers on. Even should we 
allow they were wrong at the beginning of this contest, 
cruelty and injustice have made the wrong become the 
right, and they stand now (before the wonder and admi- 



22 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

ration of the world) as a noble band of patriotic heroes. 
Hereafter, reading of their deeds, Thermopylae would 
be forgotten. 

When I aided in the capture and execution of John 
Brown (who was a murderer on our western border, and 
who was fairly tried and convicted before an impartial 
judge and jury of treason, and who, by the way, has 
since been made a god), I was proud of my little share 
in the transaction, for I deemed it my duty, and that I 
was helping our common country to perform an act of 
justice. But what was a crime in John Brown is now 
considered (by themselves) as the greatest and only 
virtue of the whole Republican party. Strange trans- 
migration! Vice to become a virtue, simply because 
more indulge in it. 

I thought then, as now, that the Abolitionists were the 
only traitors in the land, and that the entire party deserved 
the same fate of poor old Brown ; not because they wished 
to abolish slavery, but on account of the means they 
have ever used to effect that abolition. If Brown were 
living I doubt whether he himself would set slavery 
against the Union. Most, or many, in the North do, and 
openly curse the Union, if the South are to return and 
retain a single right guaranteed by every tie which we 
once revered as sacred. The South can make no choice. 
It is either extermination or slavery for themselves (worse 
than death) to draw from. I know my choice. 

I have also studied hard to discover upon what grounds 
the right of a state to secede has been denied, when our 
very name, United States, and the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, both provide for secession. But there is no 
time for words — I write in haste. I know how foolish 
I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step as this, 
where, on the one side, I have many friends and every- 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 23 

thing to make me happy; where my profession alone 
has gained me an income of more than twenty thousand 
dollars a year, and where my great, personal ambition 
has such a great field for labour. On the other hand, 
the South have never bestowed upon me one kind word; 
a place where I have no friends, except beneath the sod; 
a place where I must become either a private soldier 
or a beggar. To give up all of the former, besides my 
mother and sisters, whom I love so dearly (although they 
so widely differ from me in opinion), seems insane, but 
God is my judge. I love justice more than I do a country 
that disowns it; more than fame and wealth; more 
(heaven pardon me if wrong) than a happy home. I 
have never been upon a battlefield; but, O my country- 
men! could you all but see the reality or effects of this 
horrid war, as I have seen them (in every state, save 
Virginia) I know you would think like me, and would 
pray the Almighty to create in the Northern mind the 
sense of right and justice (even should it possess no 
seasoning of mercy), and that He would dry up this sea 
of blood between us, which is daily growing wider. Alas, 
poor country, is she to meet her threatened doom ? 

Four years ago I would have given a thousand lives 
to see her remain (as I had always known her) powerful 
and unbroken. And even now I would hold my life as 
naught to see her what she was. O my friends! if the 
fearful scenes of the past four years had never been enacted, 
or if what had been, had been but a frightful dream from 
which we could now awake, with what overflowing of 
hearts could we bless our God and pray for his continued 
favour. How I have loved the old flag can never now be 
known. A few years since and the entire world could 
boast of none so pure and spotless. But I have of late 
been seeing and hearing of the bloody deeds of which 



24 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

she has been made the emblem, and would shudder to 
think how changed she has grown. Oh how I have 
longed to see her break from the mist of blood and death 
that circles around her folds, spoiling her beauty and 
tarnishing her honour! But no, day by day she has 
been dragged deeper and deeper into cruelty and oppres- 
sion, till now (in my eyes) her once bright-red stripes look 
like bloody gashes on the face of heaven. I look now 
upon my early admiration of her glories as a dream. 
My love (as things stand to-day) is for the South alone. 
Nor do I deem it a dishonour in attempting to make a 
prisoner of this man, to whom she owes so much of her 
misery. If success attends me, I go penniless to her 
side. They say she has found that "last ditch" which 
the North have so long derided, and been endeavouring 
to force her in, forgetting they are our brothers, and that 
it 's impolitic to goad an enemy to madness. Should I 
reach her in safety and find it true, I will proudly beg 
permission to triumph or die in that same "ditch" by 
her side. 

A Confederate Doing Duty upon His Own Respon- 
sibility 

J. Wilkes Booth. 1 

There was only one person in all New York to whom, 
so far as we know, John made any mention of his plans 
for ending the war. That one was Samuel Chester, a 
member of Edwin's company, and a man John had known 
well for years. To Chester, John said he was not going 

1 "Reminiscences of the Assassination of Lincoln," by J. E. Buckingham, doorkeeper 
of Ford's Theatre, pp. 53-57 (press of Rufus H. Darby, Washington, 1894); " Life of 
Lincoln," by Henry J. Raymond, pp. 793-796 (published by Derby & Miller. New 
York. 1865). 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 25 

"to act in this portion of the country again; that he had 
taken his wardrobe to Canada, and intended to run the 
blockade." Chester thought John named a man, Martin, 
in Montreal as having charge of his theatrical wardrobe, 
which was a valuable one. 1 John told Chester he had 
a big speculation on hand, and invited him to go into it. 
Some friends who were present, joked John about his 
oil lands, but after he and Chester had left the others, 
John said he had a better thing than oil, and "one they 
would n't laugh at." 2 

Even with Chester, though, he was vague — "feeling 
his way." Just before he returned to Washington on 
the eleventh of December, John told Chester he was 
speculating in farm lands in lower Maryland and Vir- 
ginia, and that he was "sure to coin money." He urged 
Chester to join with him, but Chester said he had n't any 
means. Whereupon John said that "that didn't mat- 
ter; he would furnish the means." But he did not say 
further what the sensational nature of the speculation 
was. 

He was back in Washington on Monday, the twelfth 
of December, and stayed until Saturday morning, the 



1 In the American Magazine for November, 1908, Otis Skinner gives a pathetic 
account of the burning of that wardrobe by Edwin Booth, during the dead of a stormy 
winter night in 1873. 

2 C. T. p. 44, S. K. Chester. 



26 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

seventeenth, when he went down again to Charles County, 
was a guest at Dr. Queen's, and may have seen Dr. 
Mudd — probably did, because he went again to St. 
Mary's Church, which Dr. Mudd attended. 

He was most anxious to learn about roads between 
Washington and the Potomac, and some one evidently 
told him that a good man for him to see would be John 
H. Surratt, who had done a lot of going back and forth 
between Richmond and Washington for the Confederate 
Secret Service. 

John returned to Washington on Thursday, and on 
Friday evening he ran into Dr. Mudd on the Avenue 
in front of one of the hotels. The doctor and his brother 
Jeremiah had come to the city to do some buying. 1 They 
had arrived toward evening of the 23rd, and registered 
at the Pennsylvania House. After taking supper at a 
restaurant on the Avenue, they went about seeing the 
holiday sights. In the lobby of the National Hotel there 
was a great crowd, and when Jere stopped to speak to 
a friend, the brothers became separated. A few moments, 
later Dr. Mudd was hailed on the Avenue by John, who, 
after a little general conversation, asked for an intro- 
duction to a young man named John Harrison Surratt, 
whose family had lately moved into Washington from 

1 C T. p. iqo, Jeremiah T. Mudd. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 27 

Charles County. Dr. Mudd said he was not aware that 
the Surratts lived in Washington, but John had the 
address of their new home — 541 H Street, N. W., 
between Sixth and Seventh — written on a card. He 
told Dr. Mudd that he wanted to consult with young 
Surratt about Maryland lands, and had been told that 
Dr. Mudd knew him. 

Dr. Mudd said he had not time to go to H Street, as 
he must be at the Pennsylvania House at eight o'clock 
to meet some friends. But while they were talking, 
John Surratt came down Seventh Street toward the 
Avenue, accompanying his friend, Louis Weichmann, 
who boarded with Mrs. Surratt. Weichmann wished 
to buy some Christmas presents for his sisters in Phila- 
delphia, and he and Surratt were bound on that errand 
when Dr. Mudd hailed Surratt, and introductions fol- 
lowed. The four then went, on Booth's invitation, to 
his room at the National, a block away, where he ordered 
a milk-punch apiece, and four cigars. 1 

It seems that Dr. Mudd never liked Booth, never 
trusted him. He saw him only a few times — not more 
than three times before John came to his house disabled 
in his flight — but they seem to have been temperament- 
ally antagonistic. 



1 " Life of Dr. Mudd," p. 42. Dr. Mudd's sworn statement, see Appendix V. 



28 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

On this evening of the meeting in Washington, Dr. 
Mudd took Surratt into the passage-way outside Booth's 
room and apologized, he said, to Surratt for introducing 
to him a man he knew so little of. This was whispered 
in the passage, and it was what Weichmann afterward 
described, under oath, as "conspiring" to which he was 
not admitted. The rest of the "conspiracy" was when 
Booth, saying he had been lost when down in Charles 
County a few days before, took an old envelope out of 
his pocket and, sitting down by Surratt, began to draw 
roughly the location of sundry roads. The entire 
stay in John's room was about fifteen minutes, after 
which they all walked up to the Pennsylvania House, 
where Dr. Mudd was staying. 

The next day the Mudds returned to Bryantown and 
Booth went over to New York to spend Christmas with 
his family. It was during this visit that he made his 
chief effort to get Chester into the plot. He called at 
Chester's house in Grove Street, and asked him to take a 
walk. They went to "The House of Lords" on Houston 
Street, a favourite resort of actors, and afterward for a 
stroll up Broadway, stopping at the Revere House, then 
going on as far as the corner of Bleecker Street where 
Chester turned to go home. Booth had not yet named 
his "speculation," although he had seemed on the verge 




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THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 29 

of doing so. "When Chester turned to go, John restrained 
him and asked him to walk up to Fourth Street where 
there were not so many people. When they reached 
the unfrequented portion of that street, John stopped 
and told Chester he was "in a large conspiracy to capture 
the heads of the Government, including the President, 
and to take them to Richmond." The abduction, John 
thought, might take place in Ford's Theatre, and some 
one was needed who would get employment at the theatre 
and at a given signal open the back door so the captors 
with their captured might rush quicky out. Chester 
refused to have anything to do with so mad a scheme. 1 

John Booth was back in "Washington from New York 
on the last day of the year, and probably soon saw John 
Surratt, and was introduced to the pleasant household 
on H Street. 

Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was a kind, comely, motherly 
woman of forty-five. As Miss Mary Jenkins she had 
been a belle, if not the belle, of Prince George County, 
Maryland. But she married very young and settled on 
a farm near Washington. Later, her husband, John 
Harrison Surratt, made some money as a railroad contrac- 
tor, and purchased a place twelve miles from Washington 
where he kept a small tavern and discharged the duties 



1 C. T. p. 44, S. K. Chester. 



30 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

of postmaster. They had three children : Isaac — who 
entered the Confederate army, went to the far southwest, 
and was not heard from for years; Anna, and John H., Jr. 
Mr. Surratt died in '62, and his widow kept the tavern until 
the fall of '64, when she rented the property to John M. 
Lloyd, and with her son and daughter moved into the 
house on H Street, where she expected to support herself 
by keeping boarders. One of the first of these to take up 
his home with her was Louis J. Weichmann, who had 
gone to school at St. Charles College, Howard County, Md., 
with John Surratt. The two boys entered and left the 
college at about the same time and were there three years. 1 
John Surratt's father dying soon after he left school, 
young John, though but nineteen, was appointed United 
States postmaster in his father's place. It seems that, even 
while employed by the Government at Washington, Sur- 
ratt must have worked for the government at Richmond 
which would, of course, put him in the "spy" class. But 
spies are as necessary in war as artillery, and as common 
to one side of every struggle as to the other, and we may not 
hold a man a villain because he serves his cause under 
cover. "We had a regularly established line from Wash- 
ington to the Potomac," said Surratt, describing it, years 
afterward, "and being the only unmarried man on the 



1 C. T. p. 113, Louis J. Weichmann. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 31 

route I had most of the hard riding to do. I devised vari- 
ous ways to carry the despatches : sometimes in the heels 
of my boots, sometimes between the planks of my buggy. 

. . . It was a fascinating life to me. It seemed as 
if I could not do too much or run too great risk." 1 

Weichmann, meanwhile, had become a teacher, first in 
the country near Baltimore, then in the city of Washington ; 
and in the beginning of the year '64 he was appointed to a 
clerkship in the War Department, in the office of the 
Commissary-General of Prisoners. He had visited the 
Surratts in their country home several times and had been 
delightfully treated, so that when he heard, on the occasion 
of his last visit there, of their intended move to Washington, 
he made arrangements to become a part of the family 
circle in the new home. 2 Miss Honora Fitzpatrick 
became a boarder at the same time; and on the seventh of 
February, Mr. and Mrs. John T. Holohan and their two 
children took the big second-story front room. Distinctly 
it was a household of Southern sympathies, and as such one 
in which many tears may well have been shed during that 
winter of '64-'65. 

To this household came, early in January, John Booth, 
with his charm and his fame and his flaming purpose to 
right the wrongs of the South. On the twenty-ninth of 

1 Rockville Lecture of John H. Surratt, December 8, 1870. See Appendix VI. 
' C. T. p. 113, Weichmann. 



32 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

December John Surratt had gone to work for the Adams 
Express Company, but Booth seems to have persuaded him 
to leave, and on the fourteenth of January Surratt gave up 
his job and began to give his entire time and attention to 
the abduction plot. 1 

One of the first things he did was to go down to the 
neighbourhood of Port Tobacco, Md., where he was intro- 
duced by a man named Harborn to a carriage-painter, 
George A. Atzerodt. Through Atzerodt, Surratt bought 
of James Brawner, the hotel keeper at Port Tobacco, a 
lead-coloured, flat-bottomed boat which would hold about 
fifteen persons. This was to ferry the abductors and the 
President across the Potomac, and for that purpose it 
was kept in readiness, first at the head of Goose Creek, 
then at Nanjemoy Creek. Atzerodt was to do the 
ferrying. 2 

About that time, too, Edward Spangler, a rough 
carpenter and scene-shifter employed at Ford's Theatre, 
Washington, and "a man by the name of George" (prob- 
ably Atzerodt, who began going frequently to Washington 
as soon as he joined the conspiracy) re-fitted for John 
Booth a small stable in the alley immediately behind Ford's 



1 See Appendix VII: Note on possibility of abduction. 

2 Statement by George A. Atzerodt made in his cell July 6, 1865, "The Assassination 
of Abraham Lincoln," by Osborn H. Oldroyd, owner of the Oldroyd Lincoln Memorial 
Collection and Curator of the House where Lincoln died. O. H. Oldroyd, Washing- 
ton, 1901, p. 113. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 33 

Theatre. 1 The stable belonged to a Mrs. Davis, of whom 
it was rented for Booth by Maddox, the property-man at 
Ford's. 2 Spangler and " George " raised the roof a little to 
accommodate the buggy Mr. Booth wished to keep there, 
and put in two stalls. 

This is, also, the probable date of the urgent letter Booth 
wrote Chester, telling him he "must come," and sending 
fifty dollars with injunctions to "be there by Saturday 
night." 8 This, in all likelihood, indicated an impending 
visit of the President to Ford's Theatre, probably to see 
Forrest, of whose acting he was extremely fond. But 
Chester did not go, although neither did he at once return 
John's fifty dollars. 

Nothing came of the "Saturday night" possibility, and 
on the twenty-eighth of January Booth went to New 
York, where he may or may not have stayed until 
February 22d, when he was back in Washington. 4 He 
called again on Chester while in New York and renewed 
his urging that Chester join the plot. He told Chester 
then that he had tried to get John Matthews into it, but 
Matthews was very much frightened and would not join, 
which marked him a coward, Booth thought, and "not fit 



1 C. T. p. 7 Si Joseph Burroughs. 

* C. T. p. 75, James L. Maddox. 
» C. T. p. 44, S. K. Chester. 

* C. T. p. 46, G. W. Bunker. 



34 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

to live." Matthews was a member of the stock company 
at Ford's, and up to within a very short time before the 
murder of the President occupied that little hall-room in 
the Peterson house, across the street from the theatre, 
where Lincoln died; and there, it is quite probable, 
Booth often visited him, urging him to join the plot. 
After Chester's final refusal, in February, to have 
anything to do with the plot, and his return of the fifty 
dollars, which John said he would not have taken back 
had he not been short of funds, Chester heard nothing 
more of John Booth for a couple of months. 

About the tenth of February, Sam Arnold probably 
came over from Baltimore; if he had been living in Wash- 
ington before that date we do not know it, but on February 
10th or thereabouts he and Michael O'Laughlin engaged 
a room with Mrs. Mary Van Tine at 420 D Street. Booth 
sometimes called on them there after his return to Washing- 
ton, and Mrs. Van Tine thought that once there had been 
another man to see them. 1 In consequence, her room 
has been hectically described as " the den where the murder 
was hatched." 

John and Anna Surratt had in New York City a young 
lady cousin whom they had never seen, but with whom 
they kept up a more or less desultory correspondence. 

1 C. T. p. 222, Mrs. Mary Van Tine. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 35 

This young lady was Miss Belle Seaman, and on the sixth 
of February John wrote her a letter which was, in part, as 
follows : 

I am happy to say we are all well and in fine spirits. 
We have been looking for you to come on with a great deal 
of impatience. Do come, won't you ? Just to think, I 
have never yet seen one of my cousins. But never fear, 
I will probably see you all sooner than you expect. Next 
week I leave for Europe. Yes, I am going to leave this 
detested country, and I think, perhaps, I may give you all 
a call as I go to New York. . . . Cousin Bell, try and 
answer me in a few days at least, as I would like very much 
to hear from you before I leave home for good. . . . 

I have just taken a peep in the parlour. Would you like 
to know what I saw there ? Well, ma was sitting on the 
sofa, nodding first to one chair, then to another, next the 
piano. Anna is sitting in a corner, dreaming, I expect, of 
J. W. Booth. Well, who is J. W. Booth ? She can answer 
the question. Miss Fitzpatrick, playing with her favourite 
cat — a good sign of an old maid — the detested old 
creatures. Miss Dean fixing her hair, which is filled with 
rats and mice. 

But hark! The door-bell rings and Mr. J. W. Booth is 
announced. And listen to the scamperings. Such brush- 
ing and fixing. 1 

Evidently John Booth was not without his fluttering 
admirers in the house on H Street where he had been 
known only about a month if the date of the letter is correct. 
According to the register of the National Hotel, where 

1 " History of the United States Secret Service," by Lafayette C. Baker, published 
by L. C. Baker, Philadelphia, 1867, p. 560. 



36 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Booth invariably, so far as we know, stopped when in 
Washington, he was not in the city on February 6th nor 
at any time between January 28th and Washington's 
Birthday; 1 nor does the abduction plot seem to have 
promised at any time, during that interim, to come to a 
"head." On the other hand, John Surratt did go to New 
York in February. He called on John Booth at Edwin 
Booth's house, the elegance of which he never tired of 
describing to the interested group at H Street. 2 Whether 
he called also on his cousin Belle we do not know, but he 
probably did. He did not, however, "leave this detested 
country," but soon returned to Washington and, with the 
others, went on biding his time impatiently. 

The plot at that time embraced, besides John Booth: 
Surratt, Sam Arnold, Michael O'Laughlin, Atzerodt, 
and possibly Davy Herold. Surratt was giving his entire 
time to the plans, with the exception of an occasional 
errand between Washington and Richmond for the Con- 
federate government. O'Laughlin was doing a little 
business, taking orders in Washington which his brother 
supplied from Baltimore.' Arnold was idle, to the great 
disapproval of his people who thought — and reasonably 



>See Appendix VIII: Note on John Y. Beall. 

8 " Trial of John H. Surratt," published by the Government Printing Office, Wash- 
ington, 1867, vol. i, p. 375. 
»C. T. p. 23a, P. H. Maulsby. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 37 

— that gay, handsome, spendthrift John Booth, with his 
easy ways, his multitude of acquaintances, his celebrity, 
his large income, and expensive tastes, was no helpful 
company for a boy who had only hard work to look to for 
a plain living. Arnold belonged in the small-salaried class, 
and was a youth who would probably grow old within the 
$100-a-month limit; all questions of treasonable mischief 
aside, there was no possible good for him in loafing about 
Washington with John Booth. But Arnold, flattered, was 
loath to believe this. 

Atzerodt, too, had stopped working at his trade and was 
waiting to achieve fortune in a single bold coup. 

Davy Herold was a boy of nineteen or thereabouts whose 
father, recently deceased, had for twenty years been princi- 
pal clerk of the store at the Navy Yard. Davy had seven 
sisters, and the family was of the most unquestionable 
gentility and good report. The only boy was a bit spoiled, 
but a nice boy withal. He was trifling rather than serious 
in disposition, fond of outdoor sport, and not at all fond of 
application to a humdrum business, but in no way base. 

Just when he first came under the spell of John Booth 
we do not know, but it was probably in January, '65, 
through the Surratts, whom Davy knew slightly before they 
moved into town. 

There is, as a matter of fact, very little to connect Davy 



38 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

with the conspiracy. He was seen twice or thrice at the 
Surratts' after they moved to H Street; he was with John 
Surratt, Weichmann, Atzerodt, and Holohan at Ford's 
Theatre on March 18th, when John Booth played Pescara 
for McCullough's benefit; 1 and a half-witted negro boy 
who did chores for Mrs. Surratt told Weichmann that 
Davy was with Booth, Payne, Atzerodt, Surratt, Arnold, 
and O'Laughlin on the afternoon of March 16th when they 
attempted to capture the President. Besides these things, 
and the fact that Davy sometimes called on Booth at the 
National Hotel, and sometimes hung around the stable 
where Booth kept his horse, there is nothing to implicate 
him except with guilty knowledge, after noon of April 14th, 
of what was to be done that night. 

After an early breakfast on the last day of February, 
Booth closed his account to date at the National Hotel 
and took the 8.15 train for Baltimore. 2 That was the 
Tuesday before Lincoln's second inauguration. In Balti- 
more, later in that day, Booth was standing on the steps 
of Barnum's Hotel when he saw a wretched-looking 
young fellow dragging himself miserably by. The 
youngster was magnificently built, with a breadth of 
shoulders and a bull-like thickness of neck which recalled 
to John Booth some one he had once seen. He called 



1 C. T. p. us, Louis Weichmann. 
2 C. T. p. 46, G. W. Bunker. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 39 

out, and the shambling young giant turned. Then 
John knew him. Nearly four years before, in the late 
spring of '61, when Richmond was full of martial stir, 
there had sat high up in the cheaper seats of Ford's 
Theatre one night a gawky, overgrown country lad, a 
Baptist preacher's son, who, although he was only sixteen, 
had hastened to enlist in the Second Florida Infantry. 
The lad had never been to a theatre before, and he was 
entranced with all he saw and heard, but chiefly with 
John Booth. And although he was unused to stage- 
doors he had found his way to the back of Ford's Theatre, 
and waited in the dark for his enchanter to come out. 
When Booth came, and the country lad stepped timidly 
up to speak to him, that love of being loved which was 
the foundation of John Booth's charm was instantly 
appealed to, and the brilliant young actor and the raw 
young recruit left the alley together, chatting pleasantly. 
Before the recruit went to war in Lee's army to fight in 
the bloodiest battles straight through to the bloodiest 
angle of Gettysburg, where he fell, wounded, he saw 
John Booth several times; but their ways never crossed 
again until that day in '65. In the meantime, the Florida 
boy had fought, had fallen, had served as a prisoner- 
nurse in hospitals at Gettysburg and Baltimore, had 
escaped and, failing to rejoin his old regiment, had 



40 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

enlisted with a regiment of Virginia cavalry with which 
he staved until January, '65, when he became disheart- 
ened over the Confederate cause, went to Baltimore, sold 
his horse — his sole possession — and started out to 
look for work. He had not been successful, his little 
funds were all gone, and when Booth met him he was 
deeply discouraged. His two brothers had been killed 
at Murfreesboro, he had not heard from home in a long 
time; and he felt — this boy of twenty who had spent the 
last four years in scenes of carnage and devastation — 
that life was worth mighty little to him. > 

To this desperate and blindly adoring young giant, John- 
of-the-many-charms unfolded his wild scheme of cap- 
turing the President. And the very next evening, 
probably, the Florida boy, Lewis Payne, rang the bell 
at 541 H Street and asked Weichmann, who opened the 
door, for John Surratt. When told that Surratt was not 
in, Lewis asked for Mrs. Surratt, and she went to the hall 
to speak to him. 2 What he told her we shall never know, 
but it was probably this : That he was an ex-soldier of 
the Confederate army, a stranger newly come to Wash- 
ington, and a friend of John Booth, who had told him 
to seek out John Surratt. This was more than enough to 
get the hospitality of Mrs. Surratt, and she asked the big 

1 C. T. p. 313, argument of W. E. Doster. 

2 C. T. p. 114, Weichmann; p. 132, Miss Honora Fitzpatrick; p. i32, r Mrs. Holohan. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 41 

youth to stay. Supper was over and her dining-room was 
in some disarrangement, 1 so she prepared a tray which 
she asked Weichmann to carry up to the big stranger, 
who gave the name of Wood. "Wood" was quartered 
for the night in Weichmann's room and there he ate 
voraciously of the supper carried to him, and, immediately 
it was eaten, went to bed. In the morning when Weich- 
man rose — or so he testified — "Wood" was gone. 

On Friday evening, March 3d, Booth was in Mrs. 
Surratt's parlour for a while in company with John Surratt, 
Weichmann, and the ladies of the household. Miss 
Anna Surratt played the piano, they sang, probably 
Booth did some. hugely comical "imitations," or in some 
other wise lent his mimetic gift to the fun of the occasion 
— and thus passed a happy hour or two. Then, while 
the evening was still young, the three men went up to 
the Capitol to witness the closing scenes of a memorable 
Congress. 2 

The next day Booth was at the inauguration, and 
afterward walked down the Avenue to the hotel with 
Walter Burton, the night clerk of the National, an enthu- 
siastic Lincoln-lover who in all his association with John 
Booth never knew that the actor was not also a loyal 
admirer of the President. On the way from the Capitol 

1 Surratt Trial, vol. i, p. 376. 

2 S. T. vol. i, p. 380. 



42 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

after the ceremonies Booth said nothing to dampen the 
ardour of his companion, nor to indicate that he had been 
charging so wildly about during the inaugural as to excite 
suspicion and even — according to some reports — to 
get himself briefly locked up. 1 

It was at this time that an incident occurred which has 
been related by John McCullough: Booth had returned 
to the National late in the day of March 1st, and was 
there uninterruptedly for the next three weeks. On 
or about the fourth of March, McCullough went over 
from New York, registered at the National, and went 
up to Booth's room, which he entered without knocking. 
"At the first wink," he said, "I saw Booth sitting behind 
a table, on which was a map, a knife, and a pistol. He 
had gauntlets on his hands, spurs on his boots, and a 
military hat of a slouch character on his head. As the 
door opened he seized that knife and came for me. Said 
I: 'John, what in the name of sense is the matter with you 
— are you crazy?' He heard my voice and arrested 
himself, and placed his hands before his eyes like a man 
dissipating a dream, and then said: 'Why, Johnny, 
how are' you?' " f 

On Monday, March 13th, Booth telegraphed to 

1 Told the present writer by Mr. Walter Burton, night clerk of the National Hotel, 
Washington, in 1865, now manager of the Oxford Hotel, Washington. 
3 Oldroyd, p. 02. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 43 

O'Laughlin in Baltimore saying: "Don't fear to 
neglect your business. You had better come at once." 1 
That Monday evening the household of Mrs. Surratt — 
John excepted — was again in the parlour, passing the 
time with music and euchre, when the door-bell rang 
and Weichmann, going to the door, admitted "Wood" — 
this time well dressed and well groomed. When told 
John Surratt was not at home, he asked for John's mother 
to whom he gave his name as Lewis Payne. Mrs. Surratt 
took Mr. Payne into the parlour and introduced him 
to her household. He spent the evening with the family, 
and at bedtime was shown to Weichmann's room. Noth- 
ing was said about "Wood, " and if Payne was recognized 
as identical with the guest of nearly a fortnight before, 
no comment was passed upon it. He went out after 
breakfast the next morning, and returned late in the 
afternoon. John Surratt was at home, lying on the bed 
in Weichmann's room, and Payne asked the man on the 
bed if he were Mr. Surratt. On being answered in the 
affirmative, Payne expressed a wish to talk privately 
with Mr. Surratt — or so Weichmann said. 8 Weich- 
mann's attitude in the whole matter of the conspiracy is, 
however, so inexplicable, his testimony is so full of state- 
ments easily proved untrue, that anything attributed to 

1 C T. p. 223, John Hapman. 
a C. T. p. 115, Weichmann. 



44 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

him must be taken with reservation, and nothing he says 
must be credited unless it is well supported by other 
evidence. That particular statement about Payne's 
meeting with Surratt is probably true. It is probably 
true, too, that on returning from work in the War Depart- 
ment on Wednesday the fifteenth, about five in the 
afternoon, Weichmann found a false moustache on his 
table — and hid it; also that, not seeing Surratt or 
Payne about, he went up to the attic over his room and 
saw them "sitting together on the bed surrounded by 
spurs, bowie-knives, and revolvers," and that he went 
down and told Mrs. Surratt what he had seen, only to be 
reminded by her that, as John Surratt was in the habit 
of "going into the country he had to have these things 
as a protection." Weichmann must certainly have 
known that John Surratt was a bearer of secret messages 
for the Confederate government, going often to Rich- 
mond through the thick of Federal detectives, with des- 
patches in his boots and elsewhere. And his knowing 
this — he, a supposedly loyal clerk of the War Depart- 
ment — is what makes us doubt his horror of the Surratt 
disloyalty when $25,000 was the price on John Surratt 's 
head. Weichmann was not so shocked by the bowie- 
knives, however, that he was not anxious to accompany 
Surratt to Ford's Theatre on a pass John Booth had 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 45 

given him. But Surratt took Payne and two of his 
mother's boarders — Miss Fitzpatrick and little nine- 
year old Appolonia Dean. 1 

Weichmann said that toward the close of the play 
Booth came to the box — winch was box 7, part of what 
was known as the President's box — and called Payne 
and Surratt out, talking to them excitedly. He did not 
say how he knew this. He also said that after Surratt 
and Payne brought Miss Fitzpatrick and little Appolonia 
home in a hack, they went away again and stayed away 
all night. This is probably true, for that seems a likely 
time for the meeting at the Lichau House whose exact 
date no one seems to have remembered. 

What excited Booth may have been the news that on 
the next day there was to be a performance at the Sol- 
diers' Home of "Still Waters Run Deep," with Lester 
Wallack, E. L. Davenport, and a special company includ- 
ing John Matthews. The President was expected to 
attend this performance and it was Booth's plan to lie in 
wait for the President's carriage as it was returning, 
spring from the bushes by the roadside at a lonely spot, 
overpower the men on the box, gag and bind them, and, 
turning right-about-face, drive the captured with all 
speed toward the Potomac at Nanjemoy Creek; there, 

1 C. T. p. i2i, Miss Fitzpatrick; S. T. vol. i, p. 378, Weichmann. 



46 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

on the waiting boat secured by Atzerodt, he was to be 
ferried across to Virginia and hurried to Richmond. 1 
O'Laughlin had arrived in Washington in response to 
Booth's telegram 2 on Tuesday, and he was at this meet- 
ing. Arnold was there; 3 Surratt and Payne were there; 
Atzerodt was there; Davy Herold may or may not have 
been there. 

It seems to have been a stormy meeting, whatever it was 
about. John Surratt says that the news of the Soldiers' 
Home play reached the conspirators only about three- 
quarters of an hour before the time appointed; if this is 
true, the meeting of the night before was probably that 
one — the date of which no one was able to remember 
exactly — at which John Surratt told the others that their 
plot was known in Washington and steps were being taken 
to thwart it. He said the best thing they could do would 
be to throw up the whole project, and every one but Booth 
seemed inclined to agree with him. The arch-conspirator 
listened in silence to the murmurs of withdrawal, and then 
rose, smote the table with his fist and exclaimed: "Well, 
gentlemen, if the worst comes to the worst I shall know 
what to do." Four of the six others then rose to go, one 



1 John Surratt's Rockville Lecture (see Appendix VI.), Atzerodt's Statement (see 
Appendix XVI.). 

2 C T. p. 223, John Hapman. 

8 C. T. p. 23s, Eaton G. Horner. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 47 

saying: "If I understand you to intimate anything more 
than the capture of Mr. Lincoln I, for one, will bid you 
good-bye." The others nodded their acquiescence and they 
put on their hats and moved toward the door. Then 
Booth asked pardon, disavowed any more sinister intention 
than the one originally agreed upon, and the meeting was 
resumed, to last until five o'clock in the morning. Arnold, 
however, said that if nothing was done that week he 
would withdraw from the plan entirely. 

On Thursday afternoon, when the virtuous Mr. Weich- 
mann reached home, he found nobody about. A ring of 
the service-bell brought from the kitchen a mulatto boy, 
Dan, who said that Massa John had gone horse-back riding 
with six or seven other gentlemen, including Mr. Booth, 
Payne, Atzerodt, Dave Herold, and two others Dan did n't 
know. 

According to Weichmann's story, when he went down to 
dinner he met Mrs. Surratt in the hall. She was weeping 
bitterly and said: 

" Mr. Weichmann, go down to your dinner and make the 
best of it you can — John is gone away! John is gone 
away!" 1 

John had probably left a note for his mother telling her 
that he had gone to abduct the President and would go 

1 C. T. p. 1 1 8, Weichmann. 



48 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

from Richmond to Europe. Weichmann felt that Mrs. 
Surratt's upset condition was evidence of her complicity; 
whereas it looks to the unprejudiced mind as if she would, if 
previously aware of the plot, have by this time learned to 
control herself, and if she approved of it could only have 
rejoiced that her boy was to play a leading part in the 
great coup of the long, bitter war. 

About half-past six, after Weichmann and the other 
boarders had eaten their. dinner, Surratt, Payne, and Booth 
came one at a time into Weichmann's room, dressed as 
from riding, and all seemed greatly excited and 
disappointed. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase had gone 
to the Soldiers' Home in Mr. Lincoln's stead, and as they 
wanted, in Surratt's words, "a bigger chase," nothing 
was accomplished. 

According to Weichmann, it was Surratt who got home 
first. "My prospects are gone," he declared to Louis, 
"my hopes are blasted. Can you get me a clerkship? 
I want something to do." 

In about half an hour, Weichmann says, Payne, Booth, 
and Surratt left the house — Payne to return there no 
more until the night of his arrest a month later. Then 
Weichmann, brimming with suspicion, went to call on 
Captain D. H. Gleason, a fellow clerk in the office of the 
Commissary-General of Prisoners. Captain Gleason was 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 49 

not at home, but Weichmann told him the next day what 
had happened. At least, Weichmann said he did, and 
that they agreed things looked strange, and perhaps the 
Secretary of War ought to be told ; but they decided after 
all not to tell — only "to keep an eye on them [the con- 
spirators] and if anything again came up to report it 
promptly to the authorities, secure horses if need be, and 
pursue them." This was a good deal of responsibility 
for two young men to take who were busy in a department 
all day long, but Weichmann says they took it. It was 
Captain Gleason who told the Secretary of War, after the 
President's assassination, to summon Weichmann as a 
witness, but Captain Gleason was never himself called to 
the stand to say whether he and Weichmann had or had 
not previously conferred and decided not unnecessarily 
to alarm the Government. 1 

Shortly after the fiasco of March 16th, Arnold and 
O'Laughlin returned to Baltimore. Arnold had heark- 
ened to the entreaties of his family about the evils of idling, 
and determined to go to work. He applied for a clerkship 
in the store of John W. Wharton, a sutler, outside Fortress 
Monroe, and while waiting to hear from his application 
lived at home and with his brother at Hookstown, six 
miles in the country.* O'Laughlin returned to Baltimore 

1 C. T. p. no, Weichmann. 

2 C. T. p. 240, William S. Arnold; Frank Arnold. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 51 

not with them — he probably supped with McCullough — 
though he saw Herold and Atzerodt for a few moments in 
the restaurant next to Ford's. 1 

On the Tuesday following, Booth paid $50 on account 
at the National Hotel and left on the 7.30 p.m. train for 
New York, where he stayed till Saturday morning. 2 On 
Thursday he telegraphed Weichmann at Mrs. Surratt's 
saying: 

Tell John telegraph number and street at once. 

J. Booth. 

Mrs. Holohan, thinking the telegram might be of an 
urgent nature, took it to Weichmann at the War Office. 
Nobody knows what the telegram meant — or, if anyone 
knows he has never told — but Weichmann insisted it was 
sent to him to implicate him in the plot. And if Surratt 
telegraphed in reply anything about a number and street 
no one was able to remember it. 3 

On his return to Washington, Booth seems to have 
stopped over in Baltimore where he saw O'Laughlin but 
not Arnold. The latter was out at Hookstown with his 
brother, and though he went in to town when he heard 
Booth was there, it was too late to catch him. So Arnold 



1 C. T. p. 115, Weichmann. 

a C T. p. 46, Bunker. 

' C. T. p. 118, Weichmann. 



52 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

wrote to him from Hookstown on Monday the 27th as 
follows : 

Dear John: Was business so important that you 
could not remain in Balto. till I saw you ? I came in as 
soon as I could, but found you had gone to W — n. I called 
also to see Mike, but learned from his mother he had gone 
out with you, and had not returned. I concluded, there- 
fore, he had gone with you. How inconsiderate you have 
been! When I left you, you stated we would not meet in 
a month or so. Therefore, I made application for employ- 
ment, an answer to which I shall receive during the week. 
I told my parents I had ceased with you. Can I, then, 
under existing circumstances, come as you request ? You 
know full well that the G — t suspicions something is going 
on there; therefore, the undertaking is becoming more 
complicated. Why not, for the present, desist, for various 
reasons, which, if you look into, you can readily see, with- 
out my making any mention thereof. You, nor any one, 
can censure me for my present course. You have been 
its cause, for how can I now come after telling them I had 
left you? Suspicion rests upon me now from my whole 
family, and even parties in the county. I will be compelled 
to leave home anyhow, and how soon I care not. None, 
no, not one, were more in favour of the enterprise than 
myself, and to-day would be there, had you not done as you 
have — by this I mean, manner of proceeding. I am, as 
you well know, in need. I am, you may say, in rags, 
whereas to-day I ought to be well clothed. I do not feel 
right stalking about with means, and more from 
appearances a beggar. I feel my dependence ; but even all 
this would and was forgotten, for I was one with you. 
Time more propitious will arrive yet. Do not act rashly or 
in haste. I would prefer your first query, 'go and see how 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 53 

it will be taken in R — d,' and ere long I shall be better 
prepared to be with you again. I dislike writing; would 
sooner verbally make known my views; yet your non- 
writing causes me thus to proceed. 

Do not in anger peruse this. Weigh all I have said, and, 
as a rational man and a friend, you cannot censure or 
upbraid my conduct. I sincerely trust this, nor aught else 
that shall or may occur, will ever be an obstacle to obliter- 
ate our former friendship and attachment. Write me to 
Balto., as I expect to be in about Wednesday or Thursday, 
or, if you can possibly come on, I will Tuesday meet you 

in Balto., at B . Ever I subscribe myself, 

Your friend, 

Sam. 1 

This letter may have preceded or may have been in 
answer to a telegram of that same date which Booth sent to 
O'Laughlin saying: 

Get word to Sam. Come on, with or without him, 
Wednesday morning. We sell that day sure. Don't fail. 

J. Wilkes Booth. 2 

It is difficult to guess what plan this refers to, for the 
President was at City Point with General Grant, and there 
was no thought of his return by Wednesday nor for days 
thereafter. He had gone down the Potomac on the 
River Queen, convoyed by the little steamer Bat, and 
arrived at City Point, at the junction of the Potomac and 
the James, on Friday evening the twenty-fourth of March. 

1 C.T. p. 235, Lieutenant William H. Terry. 

2 C. T. p. 223, Edward C. Stewart. 



54 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Mrs. Lincoln and Tad were with him, and Grant was 
there to greet him. On Monday, Sherman came up from 
Goldsborough, N. C, and the President and his two 
leading generals had two long interviews whereat Lincoln 
and Sherman did most of the talking and Grant the 
"heaviest listening." The two generals seemed agreed 
that in all probability one or the other of them would have 
to fight another big and bloody battle, but that it would 
be the last. Lincoln begged to know if further bloodshed 
could not possibly be avoided and Sherman assured him 
it rested with Jefferson Davis and General Lee. 1 

It was an anxious time: the South was practically 
beaten but it had not yet bowed. The ragged, starving, 
desperate army of Lee had two alternatives, and two 
only: The Union army encircled Richmond and Peters- 
burg, except on the west and southwest; if Lee should 
abandon his defence of those cities he might either join 
Johnston in North Carolina or retreat by way of Lynch- 
burg into the mountains and indefinitely prolong the 
bloodshed of a war already ended in effect. 

Lincoln felt that every life henceforth laid down in 
this war was a sacrifice which ought to be prevented, and 
it was probably his earnest pleading which hastened 

1 Rhodes, vol. v., pp. 107-108; "Sherman's Memoirs," vol. ii., pp. 326-331; "Cam- 
paigning with Grant," by General Horace Porter, p. 417 (published by the Century 
Company, 1897). 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 55 

Grant into the field on Wednesday the 29th, to begin his 
last, or Appomattox, campaign, the object of which was 
to intercept Lee's retreat toward the west or southwest, 
and force an early peace. 

Throughout the eleven days of that campaign Lincoln 
sat at City Point headquarters, tensely waiting. Those 
were the days when he was so often seen playing with 
the three motherless kittens whose orphaned crying he 
hushed with the stroking of his big gentle hands. 1 Mrs. 
Lincoln returned to Washington on Saturday, the first 
of April — the day Sheridan was fighting the battle 
of Five Forks — leaving little Tad with his father. 

The next day a messenger from the War Department 
tiptoed down the aisle of St. Paul's Church, Richmond, 
where Jefferson Davis was attending service, 2 and 
handed him Lee's telegram saying: "I see no prospect 
of doing more than holding our position here till night. 
I am not certain that I can do that. If I can I shall 
withdraw to-night north of the Appomattox, and, if pos- 
sible, it will be better to withdraw the whole line to-night 
from James River. ... I advise that all preparations 
be made for leaving Richmond to-night." 3 



1 " Campaigning with Grant," p. 410. 

2 "Life of Jefferson Davis" by Mrs. Davis, vol. ii, pp. 655, 667; "From Manassas to 
Appomattox," by General Longstreet, p. 607 (published by Lippincott & Co., Phila.). 

3 O. R., Series I, vol. xlvi, part i, p. 1264. 



56 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

That night Richmond and Petersburg were evacuated, 
and the next morning the Union troops marched in. 
Grant, hot in pursuit of Lee's army, had no time to 
ride victorious into the conquered capital, but Lincoln 
knew that if he moved expeditiously he might see his 
Lieutenant-General before he left Petersburg; so he 
telegraphed Secretary Stanton that he was going to the 
front to see Grant. To this Stanton hastened to reply 
most characteristically: "Allow me respectfully to ask 
you to consider whether you ought to expose the nation 
to the consequence of any disaster to yourself in the pur- 
suit of a treacherous and dangerous enemy like the rebel 
army." This caution did not reach the President until 
late in the afternoon when he wired: "Thanks for your 
caution, but I have already been to Petersburg. Stayed 
with General Grant an hour and a half, and returned 
here. It is certain now that Richmond is in our hands, 
and I think I will go there to-morrow. I will take care 
of myself." 1 

Richmond was indeed in our hands. Davis with his 
Cabinet and his staff and other officials left their capital 
at eleven o'clock Sunday night, and at the time Lincoln 
was telegraphing Stanton as above, had reached Danville 
in safety. Under Lee's orders, all tobacco in the city 

1 O. R., Series I, vol. xlvi, part iii, pp. 508, 320. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 57 

and all stores which could not be removed were set on 
fire before the evacuation, and that Sunday night was 
marked by conflagration and rioting. By seven in the 
morning the Union soldiers began coming in, bands 
playing, banners unfurled, throats splitting with cheer 
on cheer. 1 The next day Lincoln entered most 
modestly, with a tiny escort, and remained over night, 
returning to City Point Wednesday. He found good 
news from Grant awaiting him, and was anxious to go 
forward upon the trail of that victorious general, and be 
present at the surrender which was now imminent. But 
on Thursday came from Washington the news of Secre- 
tary Seward's injury in being thrown from his carriage — 
he sustained fractures of the arm and of the jaw — and 
the President felt that he ought to get back to his post 
at the White House. On that day, though, Mrs. Lincoln 
returned to City Point accompanied by Senator and Mrs. 
Harlan and Senator Sumner, all anxious to go to Rich- 
mond. This delayed the return to Washington until 
Saturday, 2 and when the River Queen reached her dock 
at nine o'clock Sunday night, the President was greeted 
with the news of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox 
that afternoon. 3 



1 Rhodes, vol. v, p. 118. 

2 See Appendix IX: Note on Lincoln's Last Journey. 

* Col. W. H. Crook, who accompanied the President to City Point, as body guard, 



58 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Meanwhile, the fall of Richmond had been celebrated 
in Washington on April 3rd, with great rejoicing. And 
toward evening of that day John Surratt came home 
from the fallen capital, whither he had gone with some 
despatches, arriving there the night of Friday, March 
31st. He was told that Benjamin, the Confederate 
Secretary of War, wanted to see him, and he reported 
to that gentleman at the Spotswood Hotel where, on his 
agreeing to carry some despatches to Canada, he was 
given the despatches and two hundred dollars in gold to 
pay his expenses. He left Richmond Saturday morning, 
and arrived in Washington about four o'clock Monday 
afternoon. He went home, but did not stay except to 
change his underclothing. This he accounts for by saying 
that a detective had been to his house inquiring of a 
servant his whereabouts. He asked his chum Weichmann 
to go down town with him and have some oysters, and 
after they had eaten these in an oyster bay on the Avenue, 
Surratt bade Weichmann good-bye, saying he would sleep 
at the National Hotel that night and leave by an early 
morning train for Montreal. 1 That was the last they 

relates {Harper's Magazine, September, 1907, p. 532) that when the carriage contain- 
ing the President's party left the wharf in Washington, Sunday evening, the "streets 
were alive with people, all very much excited. There were bonfires everywhere. . . . 
We halted the carriage and asked a bystander, 'What has happened?' He looked at us 
in amazement, not recognizing Mr. Lincoln. 'Why, where have you been? Lee has 
surrendered.' " 

1 Surratt's Lecture. See Appendix VI. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 59 

saw of each other until more than two years later, when 
Weichmann, having sworn away the life of John Surratt's 
mother, stood on the witness stand prepared to do the 
same by his heavily manacled friend in the prisoner's 
dock. 

Booth was not at the National that night of April 3rd. 
He had gone to New York on Saturday, leaving word 
with Atzerodt to sell his horse and buggy. If he had 
had any scheme for Wednesday, March 29th, it fell 
through; and it seems highly probable that when Booth 
left Washington three days later it was in disgust with 
the whole affair. Surratt was away; Arnold had left the 
whole business; O'Laughlin was working in Baltimore 
and paid no attention to his urgent telegram of Monday; 
their victim was at City Point and seemed likely to stay 
there. So Booth went to New York, and when Surratt 
called on him at Edwin's house on Tuesday afternoon, 
he was told that John had that morning left suddenly 
for Boston where Edwin was acting in "Hamlet." Whether 
he was really out of town or not seems impossible to 
determine. Certainly he was in New York on Friday, 
for on that night he was at "The House of Lords" and 
was seen and talked with for the last time by a number 
of his actor friends playing in New York. Samuel Chester 
was one of these, and to him John said he had been very 



60 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

close to Lincoln on inauguration day, and had had "an 
excellent chance to kill the President if I had wished." 1 

The next day he returned to Washington, and there, 
on Sunday night, he must have heard of Lee's surrender. 

Monday evening he called at Mrs. Surratt's where he 
found, besides the members of the little household, a 
friend of the family, Miss Anna Ward, who had received 
a letter from John Surratt and taken it to his mother 
and sister to share its contents with them. 

After the guests had gone, Mrs. Surratt told Weichmann 
it would be necessary for her to drive to Surrattsville 
the next day to see about some money due her from a 
Mr. Nothey for land purchased by him from her husband. 
She asked Weichmann if he thought he could get leave 
from his office and drive her there. This leave he obtained 
without difficulty on Tuesday morning when he reported 
at the War Department, and he then went, on Mrs. 
Surratt's suggestion, to John Booth at the National Hotel 
to ask for his horse and buggy. Booth told Weichmann 
he had sold his horse and buggy only the day before, but 
gave him ten dollars to hire one — which was very charac- 
teristic of open-handed John, who never refused any one 
a favour if he could possibly help it; but this helped to 
hang Mrs. Surratt because the prosecution contended 



>C. T. p. 44, Chester. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 61 

Booth could not conceivably have been so courteous 
except for a fell purpose. 

So Weichmann drove Mrs. Surratt into the country 
where the early spring was reigning in delicate beauty, and 
after Mr. Nothey had been seen and arrangements made 
with him they started cityward and reached home about 
six o'clock. 1 That night at the White House 2 Lincoln 
made his last public address in which he said of the 
seceded states now conquered that "finding themselves 
safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether 
they had ever been abroad." 8 He was deeply anxious 
to press home upon his people, even in the first flush of 
their rejoicing, their sober responsibilities toward the 
conquered states, and he was grieved rather than gratified 
by any demonstrations of joy which took no account of the 
sorrow of the defeated, showed no sign of gentle intent 
toward them. 

Thursday, General Grant, who had gone modestly from 
Appomattox to City Point, arrived in Washington and was 
greeted tumultuously. That night the city was en fete, 
and there were illuminations and speeches and receptions 
and band concerts, and everybody who was n't glad for 



1 C T. p. 113, Weichmann. 

2 See Appendix X: Note on Lincoln's Last Address. 

* " Lincoln's Complete Works," vol. ii, pp. 672-673, edited by Nicolay and Hay, 
published by the Century Company, New York, 1894. 



62 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

peace had at least to hold his tongue, for the Capital — 
notwithstanding its large disloyal population — was drunk 
with the joy of victory. 

About half-past five that evening Michael O'Laughlin 
and three other young men came over from Baltimore to 
see the celebration — and O'Laughlin to sacrifice his life. 
Shortly after arriving Mike stopped in at the National to 
see John Booth; but John was not there. 1 

Nobody knows where Booth was that evening of the 
13th, or that night. He was not at the National after 
Thursday noon, so far as any one knows. During the 
afternoon he dropped in at Grover's Theatre and asked 
Manager Hess if he were going to invite the President to 
the play the following night when the fall of Sumter would 
be celebrated. 2 After that we have no trace of him until 
about noon on Friday. 

Friday morning early Mr. Burton, the night-clerk of the 
National, going off duty, met Davy Herold in the hall. 

"Going to see Booth?" he asked the boy. Davy said 
he was. 

"Well, I don't think he 's in," said Burton, "I did n't 
see him come in last night, and he always stops for a chat 
with me before he goes to bed. But you 'd better look in 
his room and see." 



1 C. T. pp. 228-230, Early, Murphy, Henderson, et al. 
2 C. T. p. 99, C. D. Hess. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 63 

Davy went to 228 and knocked, but got no response; 
and when the room was opened it was found to have been 
unoccupied. Nor was John Booth ever again seen 
by any one about the hotel — which disposes of the widely 
current story of his throwing his key on the counter about 
eight o'clock Friday night and announcing that there was 
to be "some good acting at Ford's" that night. 1 

At noon on Friday he sauntered up to Ford's Theatre,* 
on Tenth Street between E and F, where he frequently got 
mail, and as he came up the street in the bright April 
sunshine he looked so handsome that young Harry Ford 
could not resist a little good-natured banter about "the 
best-looking man in Washington." 

There was one long letter for Booth that morning, and 
he smiled repeatedly as he sat on the steps reading it. 
When he had finished, some one said teasingly — John 
was an excellent subject to tease, quick with his retorts 
but always good-natured withal — "Your friends Lincoln 
and Grant are coming to the theatre to-night, John, and 
we 're fixin' to have Lee sit with them." 

"Lee would never do that," John replied with spirit. 
"He would never let himself be paraded, like a conquered 
Roman, by his captors." 3 

Then he got up, thoughtfully, and walked away. 

1 Told the present writer by Mr. Burton. 

2 C. T. p. 99, H. Clay Ford. 

* Told the present writer by Mr. H. Clay Ford. 



PART II 

THE DEED 



II 

THE DEED 

rr^HE rejoicing throughout the North on Monday the 
tenth of April was such as our nation had never seen 
and, it is to be hoped, will never see again, for only such 
horrors as marked four years of civil strife could bring 
such glad relief as the news from Appomattox. 

In the morning papers was printed Stanton's order 
suspending the draft, stopping the purchase of military 
supplies, and removing the military restrictions from trade. 
During the day the Inman Line despatched a special 
steamer to carry the peace news across the ocean. Busi- 
ness was at a standstill, courts adjourned, houses and 
shops and Government buildings were decorated, flags 
floated from every mast, cannon were fired, bells were 
rung, whistles were blown, the streets of every town and 
village swarmed with laughing, crying, shouting people 
who vented their feelings according to their sorts. Bar- 
rooms were full and peace was toasted. Churches were 
full and God was praised. Prayer-meetings were held in 
churches. In schools, even in the marts of trade — yes, 

67 



68 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

in bar-rooms, sometimes — men broke into the universal 
psalm of thanksgiving: "Praise God from Whom all 
blessings flow." And over the western portico of the 
Capitol was a motto: "This is the Lord's doing; it is 
marvellous in our eyes." 

Toward nightfall illuminations and bonfires began to 
blaze from sea to sea — or to the uttermost limits of the 
telegraph — like the victory-fires of the ancient Greeks ; 
and the air was full of songs of patriotism exultant. 

This was the atmosphere to which Lincoln returned from 
the seat of war. This was the spirit to which he addressed 
that last public utterance of Tuesday evening, so full of 
magnanimity that Sumner thought it augured "confusion 
and uncertainty in the future, with hot controversy. Alas, 
alas!"' 

On Thursday Washington went wild over the coming of 
Grant, the shy, silent, stooping little victor. There was a 
grand reception for him that night at the home of the War 
Secretary Stanton ; and on the morrow — Good Friday — 
the fall of Fort Sumter, four years ago, was to be celebrated. 

On Friday morning, while the President's family were 
at breakfast, young Captain Lincoln came home. He 
was twenty-two years old and less than a year out of 
Harvard. For the last two months he had been a member 



1 " Life of Charles Sumner," by E. L. Pierce, vol. iv, p. 236. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN GO 

of General Grant's staff and as such with Grant at Appo- 
mattox. He had last seen his father on Monday of the 
week before, when he accompanied the President to 
Petersburg and back to City Point. That night he left 
headquarters to ride after Grant's army which was moving 
westward in two divisions, north and south of the 
Appomattox River, with Lee's army in between. 

There was a great deal the President wanted to ask 
young Robert about those last days of the campaign, and 
particularly about the events of Palm Sunday afternoon in 
the sitting-room of the little McLean house at Appomattox; 
so breakfast was a chatty meal. Little Tad was present, 
and excitedly interested; he had been with his father at 
City Point and Richmond and he felt personally concerned 
in all that had gone on after he left. 

After breakfast the President received Schuyler Colfax, 
Speaker of the House, who was to start on Saturday on 
a long western trip in which the President was deeply 
interested. 1 When he was gone, the President took his 
usual way to the War Department, following in a spirit of 
joy and thanksgiving the old trail he had worn for himself 
in some thousands of goings and comings made in tense 
anxiousness and in deep sorrow. Johnston's army was 

1 " Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery," by Isaac Arnold, President (for many years 
before his death in 1884) of the Chicago Historical Society, p. 661. Published by 
Clarke & Co., Chicago, 1866. 



70 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

still in the field against Sherman, and there was the possi- 
bility of another dreadful battle before the last rebel laid 
down his arms. It was his anxiety about this that took 
the President to the War Office to hunt, as usual, through 
the telegraph files. 

While he was there something was said about his going 
to the theatre that evening. Stanton characterized the 
intention as "crazy," and in his blunt, grim way inveighed 
against it with all his might. But the President, who had 
never listened willingly to such cautionings, contending 
that to die once were far better than to die a thousand 
deaths through fear, felt sure that there could not now be 
any cause to be afraid. It had never seemed likely to him 
that any enemy could desire his death, since that would 
only leave his power in the hands of another; and of all 
those to whom any share of it might fall, he knew that 
none had half his mercy for the South. That Washington 
and, indeed, the whole North, not to mention the South, 
was full of his enemies he had every reason to be aware. 
He is even said by some to have been convinced that he 
would be assassinated. Others say he believed in a fore- 
boding that he should die in the hour of his greatest 
triumph. If he did have that apprehension, it is quite 
compatible, nevertheless, with his dislike of being con- 
stantly guarded. For he was a fatalist; he believed 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 71 

that what was to be, must be. "If it is to be done," he 
argued, "it is impossible to prevent it." So he went about 
his business quietly, and endured only when he must the 
futile guardianship of a special policeman. 1 

When, therefore, Stanton began again to remind him of 
the risk in exposing himself to a "treacherous and danger- 
ous enemy" he humoured his iron chancellor by proposing 
to take as special escort Major Eckert of Stanton's office, 
whose strength was prodigious and whose alertness was 
as great.* But Stanton declined to spare Eckert from the 
busy War Office that evening. And, nothing daunted 
thereby, the President good-humouredly took his departure 
to the WTiite House to preside at the regular weekly meet- 
ing of the Cabinet. 

General Grant was present at that meeting, and much 
of the talk turned, naturally, on military affairs. The 
President said he thought they would hear soon of John- 
ston's surrender to Sherman, "for," said he, "I had last 
night my usual dream which has preceded nearly every 
important event of the war. I seemed to be in a singular 
and indescribable vessel, but always the same, and to be 
moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite 
shore." The dream did not always prevision victory, he 

1 See Appendix XII: Note on Lincoln's Forebodings of Tragic Death. 

2 "Lincoln in the Telegraph Office," by David Homer Bates, published by the Century 
Company, New York, 1907, p. 366. 



72 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

admitted, but "this time it must relate to Sherman; 
my thoughts are in that direction, and I know of no 
other very important event which is likely just now to 
occur. 1 

When the great subject of reconstruction was 
approached, the President said: "I think it providential 
that this great rebellion is crushed just as Congress has 
adjourned and there are none of the disturbing elements 
of that body to hinder and embarrass us. If we are wise 
and discreet we shall reanimate the states and get their 
governments in successful operation, with order prevailing 
and the Union established, before Congress comes together 
in December. . . . I hope there will be no persecution, 
no bloodshed, after the war is over. No one need expect 
me to take any part in hanging or killing those men, even, 
the worst of them. Frighten them out of the country 
open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off [throwing 
up his hands as if scaring sheep]. Enough lives have 
been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments if we 
expect harmony and union. There is too much of a desire 
on the part of some of our very good friends to be mas- 
ters, to interfere with and dictate to those states, to treat 
the people not as fellow-citizens; there is too little 

1 Gideon Welles, in the Galaxy for April, 1872. Stanton came in as Lincoln was 
discussing his dream, and Lincoln stopped abruptly and said, " Let us proceed to busi- 
ness." Arnold, p. 429. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 73 

respect for their rights. I do not sympathize in these 
feelings." 1 

He was said by Stanton to have been "more cheerful 
and liappy" that morning than he had ever seen him. 
"He rejoiced in the near prospect of durable peace at 
home and abroad, and manifested in marked degree the 
kindness and humanity of his disposition and the tender 
and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him." a 

While the Cabinet meeting was in session a White 
House messenger went to Ford's Theatre with word that 
the President and Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied by General 
and Mrs. Grant, would occupy the state box that night.' 
The box tendered by Grover's Theatre for that same 
gala night was also accepted and given to little twelve- 
year old Tad to entertain a party of his friends. 

Early in the afternoon, however, it became apparent to 
General Grant that he could get away from his duties in 
Washington quite as well on Friday as on Saturday, 
and as he and Mrs. Grant were impatient to get to Bur- 
lington, N. J., to see their daughter Nellie, who was at 
school there, they excused themselves to Mrs. Lincoln 
and prepared to take the six o'clock train for Phila- 



1 Welles, in the Galaxy. 

2 Stanton's letter to Charles Francis Adams, United States Minister to Great Britain; 
the letter is dated April 15th, 11.40 a.m. O. R. Series I, vol. xlvi., part iii., p. 785. 

3 C T. p. 100, James R. Ford. 



74 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

delphia. 1 In their stead, Mrs. Lincoln invited Miss 
Clara Harris, daughter of Senator Ira Harris, of New York, 
and her fiance*, Major Henry Rathbone. The White 
House carriage, she sent word, would call for the young 
people a little after eight. 

In the early afternoon, 2 the President and Mrs. Lincoln 
went for a long drive out in the direction of the Soldiers' 
Home. Washington was very beautiful just then, with 
that mid-April beauty of hers which seems to be quite 
unapproachable. The dogwood and the lilacs were in 
bloom, the bright green, plumey willows swished softly 
on the banks of the shining Potomac, the air was redolent 
of sweet scents and warm with the breath almost of sum- 
mer. The capital looked very gay, with its fluttering 
flags and its gay buntings, but the country looked even 
sweeter to this tired man who was the centre of the nation's 
joy. He talked to Mrs. Lincoln of what they would do 
when this term of office was over and they could take up 
a quiet life again. "We have saved some money," he 
said, "and ought to be able to save some more. And 
with that and what I can earn from my law practice, we 
can settle down in Springfield or Chicago, and live cozily 
to a green old age."' 

1 Grant's "Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 508. 
*See Appendices XII and XIII. 
* Arnold, p. 661. 




Collection of Americana, F. H. Meserve. 

Mrs. Abraham Lincoln 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 75 

When they returned from the drive the President saw, 
as they approached the portico of the White House, a 
group of gentlemen leaving and starting across the lawn 
to the east. Among them was Richard Oglesby, War 
Governor of Illinois. 

"Come back, boys, come back!" the President shouted, 
waving his long arm in emphatic invitation. 

They came back, and went with him upstairs to his office, 
and there stayed, laughing and talking and swopping stories 
and listening to him read from a book of humour he was 
enjoying, until he had to be thrice summoned to dinner. 1 

After dinner, Speaker Colfax called again and brought 
with him Mr. Ashmun of Massachusetts. These gentle- 
men were shown into one of the parlours and talked 
briefly with the President. While they were there the 
card of Senator Stewart of Nevada was brought in. The 
Senator had taken a friend, Judge Searles, to call on the 
President, and in about five minutes the usher came back 
with a card from Mr. Lincoln who had written: 

I am engaged to go to the theatre with Mrs. Lincoln. 
It is the kind of an engagement I never break. Come 
with your friend to-morrow at ten and I shall be glad to 
see y° u - A. Lincoln. 2 

1 "Life of Lincoln," by Ida M. Tarbell, vol. iv., p. 31. Published by the McClure 
Company, New York, 1000. 

2 " Reminiscences of Senator William M. Stewart," published by the Neale Publishing 
Company, 1008, p. 190. 



76 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

At the door of Captain Lincoln's room, which was 
over the entrance, the President had stopped as he went 
downstairs and said: "We're going to the theatre, 
Bob, don't you want to go ?" x 

But Captain Robert had not slept in a bed for nearly 
two weeks, and he said that if his father did not mind he 
would rather stay at home and "turn in early." His 
father did not mind at all, and they parted with cheery 
"good-nights." 

Mr. Ashmun was disappointed at the short time he had 
with the President, and Mr. Lincoln urged him to come 
back in the morning. "Come as early as nine, if you 
will," he said. And lest there be any difficulty about 
gaining admittance an hour before the official day began, 
the President stopped at the door as he was going to his 
carriage, picked up a card and wrote on it: 

Allow Mr. Ashmun and friends to come in at 9 a.m. 
to-morrow. A Lincoln.* 

This he gave Mr. Ashmun as he bade him good-night. 
Outside, on the broad stone flagging beneath the por- 
tico, as the President went out to hand Mrs. Lincoln 
into their carriage, were Senator Stewart and Judge 
Searles. The judge was introduced, spoke briefly to 

1 Related to the present writer by Mr. Robert Lincoln. 

2 Tarbell " Lincoln," vol. iv., p. 32. See Appendix XIV: Note on George A. Ashmun. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 77 

the President, and in a minute the carriage drove rapidly 
away. 

The young sweethearts were in festive mood at the 
evening's prospect, and the President responded to it 
with much happiness in their care-free company. 1 

The play of the evening was Tom Taylor's eccentric 
comedy, "Our American Cousin," which Miss Laura 
Keene had put on in her New York theatre in 1858, scoring 
immediate success not only for herself but for Mr. Joseph 
Jefferson and Mr. E. A. Sothern of her company, each of 
whom laid the foundation of fame and fortune in their 
rendition of the roles of Asa Trenchard and Lord Dun- 
dreary, respectively. In the intervening years the play 
had continued to be a tremendous favourite, Sothern 
playing it here and abroad as " Dundreary," Jefferson tak- 
ing it to Australia and South America, and Miss Keene 
playing it nearly a thousand times in the United States. 
She was appearing in it in Chicago in June, 1860, during 
the sessions of the Republican Convention, and on the 
night of Lincoln's nomination most of the delegates went 
to see her. 2 

The company at Ford's was, in accordance with the 
custom of the times, a resident stock-company, and travel- 
ling stars came from time to time to play with it. Miss 

1 Told the present writer by their son, Mr. Henry R. Rathbone.of Chicago. 

2 Chicago Tribune, June 19, i860. Also, Appendix XV: "Our American Cousin." 



78 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Keene was fortunate in having a benefit that night, 
although it was Good Friday, ordinarily the poorest night 
in the theatrical year; for in addition to the advertised 
presence 1 of the President and "lady" and General 
Grant and "lady," the town was full of strangers bent on 
entertainment. 

At ten o'clock that Good Friday morning there was read 
in the office of the Commissary-General of Prisoners a 
letter from the Secretary of War granting a holiday to all 
employees whose churches had divine service on that day. 
One of the promptest to take advantage of that permission 
was Louis Weichmann, who attended service at St. 
Matthew's Church, remaining until 12.30, when he joined 
the H Street household at luncheon.* 

At two o'clock or thereabouts, as he was sitting in his 
room, Mrs. Surratt came to the door, knocked, and told him 
she had another letter imperatively requiring her immediate 
presence at Surrattsville; she asked him if he would be 
willing to drive here there again. The young department 
clerk was delighted at the opportunity to get out into the 
country on this beautiful afternoon, and he took the ten 
dollars that Mrs. Surratt gave him to hire a horse and 
buggy, and went at once to Howard's stable on G Street.' 

1 Washington Star, April 14, 1865. 
a S. T. vol. 1, p. 390, Weichmann. 
• C. T. p. 113, Weichmann. 



FORD'S THEATRE 



8 ►:*•!<>■» II » H;K XXXI . IVICiUT 1»1 



Friday Evening, April 14th, 1865 

this xsxrx-sivxiwG- 
PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



BENEFIT 

LAST NIGHT 



OF - MISS 



LAURA EEEI 



MR JOHN DYOl'T 

MR HARRY HAWK 

TOM TAYLOR'S CELEBRATED ECCENTRIC COMEDY 



**0UR AMERICAN^ 




Asa Trenchant 



KHITW MISS JgWE eWM Al 

TBI ~6c¥d°ROON. 



EDWIN 


ADAMS 


Orohestr*. 

Drew Clrol« and Paxtinett* 


---$1-00 

76 


Private Boxes 


»8 midWO 


fc ""^ PMnUr - 


W««hln#Vra. B 0. 



Collection of Mr. Robert Coster. 

Playbill of Ford's Theatre 

Which announced that the performance would he 
honored by the presence of President Lincoln. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 79 

As he was opening the front door of the Surratt house 
to go down the steps, he encountered John Booth standing 
with his hand on the bell in the act of ringing. The two 
men exchanged greetings, and Booth entered the parlour, 
Weichmann going on about his errand. When he 
returned, Booth was just leaving, and in a few minutes 
Mrs. <Surratt and Weichmann started on their two-hour 
drive to Surrattsville. Before leaving, however, Mrs. 
Surratt exclaimed: "Oh, wait! I must get those things of 
Booth's." 1 She returned to the house and brought out 
a small package which she put in the bottom of the buggy. 

After leaving Ford's at a little after noon, Booth went 
(probably) to the Kirkwood House, now the Raleigh, at 
Twelfth Street and the Avenue, and sent up to Vice- 
President Johnson's room a card on which he had written : 

Don't wish to disturb you ; are you at home ? 

J. Wilkes Booth. 1 

At any rate, such a card, in Booth's writing, was sent up 
to the Vice-President's room some time previous to five 
o'clock, and was returned to the office, as Mr. Johnson 
was not in. Instead of being put in Johnson's box in the 
office, it was put by mistake into the next box, which was 
that of his private secretary, William A. Browning. Mr. 

1 S. T., vol. i, p. 391, Weichmann. 

2 C. T. p. 70, William A. Browning. 



80 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Browning got the card about five o'clock and thought it 
had been left for him, as he had a slight acquaintance 
with Booth. Whether Booth left the card, or whether he 
wrote it and Atzerodt left it, no one could say. Booth 
must have known the Vice-President would hardly be in 
his room at that time of day, so what he hoped to gain by 
sending the card is difficult to guess. Perhaps Atzerodt, 
who took a room at the Kirkwood about one o'clock that 
day, was given the card and told to send it — possibly 
to implicate Johnson in the crime Booth had just decided 
to perpetrate that night; possibly to determine for Atzerodt 
that the Vice-President was out and so make him feel free 
to explore the neighbourhood of Johnson's room. This 
latter assumption is ridiculous, however, for Atzerodt was 
a guest of the hotel and could have prowled about the Vice- 
President's room all he wished without exciting suspicion, 
and in the event of his discovering by this elaborate ruse 
that Johnson was out (which he could easily have done 
without giving his name or Booth's) he could do no more 
than that. There is a mystery in that card which has 
never been cleared, and perhaps never will be. 

After leaving the Kirkwood (if he went there) Booth 
dropped into Grover's Theatre for a few minutes and 
chatted with Mr. C. D. Hess, 1 the manager, and with Mrs. 

1 C T. p. 99, C. D. Hess. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 81 

Hess and her sister, who happened to be present. It was 
he who told Mr. Hess that the President was going to 
Ford's that night, and therefore would not occupy the box 
at Grover's tendered him to see Lester Wallack and 
E. L. Davenport. Some time during the lunch hour, 
vaguely described by everybody as "about noon," Booth 
went to Pumphrey's stable on C Street, back of the 
National Hotel, and hired a horse, for which he said he 
would call at 4.30. ' Then, apparently, he went up to 
Mrs. Surratt's, and left there about half-past two. 

Two coloured women living in the alley back of Ford's 
Theatre said they saw Mr. Booth in the alley during the 
afternoon. One said it was between two and three o'clock, 
the other did not remember the time; but as coloured 
people of their class are notoriously "wild" in all their 
estimates of time and dates, nothing can be argued there- 
from. Both of them were sure, though, that he was 
"talking to a lady," and one of them said "he and this 
lady were pointing up and down the alley as if they were 
talking about it." She added that she knew it was Mr. 
Booth because she remembered looking "right wishful at 
him." 2 The lady might have been Miss Keene, who 
probably rehearsed with the resident company during the 
day, and would have been particularly likely to do so 

1 C. T. p. 72, James W. Pumphrey. 

2 C. T. p. 75, Mary Ana Turner, Mary Jane Anderson,. 



82 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

after hearing of the distinguished guests who were 
expected. 

Ferguson, keeper of one of the restaurants which flanked 
the theatre on either side, also saw Booth in the alley dur- 
ing the afternoon, but testified that he was talking to 
Maddox, the property-man of the theatre. 1 The time 
was probably between 4.30 and 5, after Booth had got his 
horse from Pumphrey's and brought it to his stable in the 
alley back of Ford's. Edward Spangler, the scene-shifter 
and rough carpenter who helped to fix over the stable for 
Booth in January, and who did chores thereabouts for the 
actor, took the horse, and on being asked for a halter sent 
Jake Ritterspaugh, another scene-shifter, to get a rope from 
the theatre. Spangler wanted to take the saddle and 
bridle off the horse, but John told him not to; Spangler, 
however, did take them off when Mr. John was gone. 2 

After putting up the horse, John went with Maddox, 
Spangler, the stage-door keeper named John Burroughs 
and nicknamed "Peanuts," and another young man, into 
one of the restaurants next the theatre, and each took a 
drink. Between that time and eight o'clock in the evening 
we have no absolute knowledge of John Booth's move- 
ments, but he was probably in the auditorium of Ford's 
Theatre for a while — possibly between 5.30 and 6 when 

1 C. T. p. 76, James P. Ferguson. 
• C. T. p. 74. Joseph Burroughs. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 83 

most of the theatre employees would be at their early 
dinner. 

Now to go back a little : Not long after John's departure 
from the theatre at the noon hour, young Harry Clay Ford 
— Mr. John T. Ford's twenty-year-old brother — who was 
treasurer of the theatre, spoke to Thomas Raybold, the 
purchasing agent of the house, about decorating the Presi- 
dent's box. Mr. Raybold was suffering from a neuralgic 
stiff neck that day and was not able to do any active work 
in decorating, but he advised and directed, and Mr. Harry 
Ford did the actual labour with the assistance of Spangler 
and "Peanuts." 

There were two American flags which had been used on 
other occasions to decorate the state box, and in addition to 
these it was decided — since General Grant was expected 
to attend — to send to the Treasury Department and bor- 
row the Treasury regimental flag, a blue flag with white 
stars. This was draped in the centre of boxes 7 and 8 
and the American flags were disposed above; on the pillar 
in the middle a framed picture of Washington was hung. 1 

The two boxes thrown into one for the President's use 
by the removal of the partition between them, were balcony 
boxes on the right-hand side of the house facing the stage. 
(And right here is a good place to remind readers unused 

1 C. T. pp. 99, no, H. Clay Ford, Thomas J. Raybold. 



84 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

to theatre terminology that people habitually in the front 
of the house speak of the stage right and left as the play- 
goer would — and as he sees them — while those who 
habitually see the theatre from the other side of the foot- 
lights mean, of course, exactly the opposite when they say 
right or left. The President's box was on the right as the 
audience sat, on the left or "opposite prompter" side in 
the players' and stagehands' parlance.) 

The boxes were reached in this way: On entering the 
main door, near the south end of the theatre on Tenth 
Street, one traversed a lobby the whole width of the 
theatre to its north end, ascended a stairway, passed along 
an upper lobby to the extreme south of the building again, 
and went down the outside aisle to the door of the right- 
hand private boxes. This door opened into a small 
passage-way behind the two boxes, and into each of the 
boxes there was, instead of the portieres now common for 
that use, a door which locked, and which was kept locked 
when the box was not in use ; the key to it was kept by the 
usher. The first door was at the left of persons entering 
the passage ; the second was facing them. 

The ordinary chairs were removed that day, and in their 
place were put some crimson velvet easy chairs out of the 
reception-room, a chair and a sofa from the property- 
room on the stage, a large rocker that belonged to the 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 85 

reception-room set, but which Mr. Harry Ford had removed 
to his bedroom on the third floor of the connecting building 
on the south; the room under Mr. Ford's bedroom was the 
reception-room, opening into the dress-circle or first 
balcony. 

Mr. Ford had sent the rocker upstairs because the 
ushers of the dress circle used to sit on it when not busy, 
and "had greased it with their hair." Joe Simms, a 
coloured boy who worked "on the flies" went up to Mr. 
Ford's room, on his order, and brought the chair down. 
It being the most comfortable chair available, it was set 
in the corner of the box the President would inevitably 
occupy, farthest from the stage and nearest to the 
audience. Then the other furniture was arranged by Mr. 
Ford, the sofa at the end of the box nearest the stage, 
the other chairs between that and the rocker. 1 

It was about three o'clock when these preparations 
were complete. Spangler and "Peanuts" attended solely 
to the removal of the partition, and while they were 
working at their job Spangler — so "Peanuts" testified 
— said: "Damn the President and General Grant." 
Asked why he damned "a man that had never clone any 
harm to him," he said "he ought to be cursed when he 
got so many men killed." 3 

1 C. T. p. 99, H. C. Ford. . 
* C. T. p. 74, Burroughs. 



86 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

When everything was in readiness the men left the 
box and the auditorium lapsed again into that ghostly 
stillness of the theatre in daytime — the shadowy reaches 
of it full of phantom forms, the intense silence of it loud 
with echoes of dead eloquence. 

Then into the draped and decorated box stole a man! 
God knows who the man was — no one else does know. 

The man stooped down and "sighted" for the eleva- 
tion of a tall man's head above the top of the rocker, 
and on a line with that elevation he cut in the door behind 
the chair a hole big enough to admit the passage of a 
bullet; the hole was apparently bored with a small gimlet 
then cut clean with a sharp penknife. This was, presum- 
ably, in the event of the assassin getting into the passage- 
way behind the boxes, but finding the doors to the boxes 
locked for the distinguished occupants' safety. It was, 
however, an unnecessary preparation, for the lock on 
box 8 (in which was the President's chair) had been burst 
on March 7th, when some late comers found their 
seats occupied and were shown by Mr. Raybold to this 
box, the key of which had been taken away by the usher 
after the first act. So Mr. Raybold burst the lock. 1 

Another thing the man did was to set one end of a bar 
of wood three feet six inches long against the inside of 

1 C T. pp. 109, in, Thomas J. Raybold, Henry E. Merrick, James O'Brien. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 87 

the outer door, and cut to fit the other end of it a mortise 
in the plaster of the passage-way. This mortise was cut 
by some sharp instrument, the plaster removed was taken 
carefully away (probably in a paper which had received 
it as it fell), the brace was set in an obscure angle behind 
the door — and the job was done! There was no lock 
on the outer door, and this brace must be the assassin's 
sole protection against interference from the house until 
his deed was done and his leap accomplished. 1 

Edward Spangler was suspected of this preparation, 
but the job looked less like a carpenter's than like the 
work of some one who had no kit of tools. There was a 
gimlet found in Booth's trunk at the National next day, 2 
but he was not at the National after this work was done, 
if it was done Friday afternoon. It may possibly have 
been done earlier, when the abduction plan was upper- 
most and Ford's Theatre was considered a likely place 
from which to make the seizure. No one knows; but the 
hole in the door was said to look as if very recently done, 
and the probability is that Booth himself did the work 
that afternoon between five and six o'clock. 

Somewhere about one o'clock Atzerodt and Davy 
Herold went to Naylor's stable, Atzerodt taking a dark- 

1 C. T. pp. 77, 78, 82, in, James J. Gifford, Major Henry E. Rathbone, Isaac Jac- 
quette, Judge A. B. Olin, Thomas J. Raybold, Joseph T. K. Plant. 

2 C. T. p. 112, Bunker. 



88 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

bay mare which he had just hired from Keleher's stable 
at Eighth and E streets, a few squares away. Atzerodt said 
he wanted to put the mare up. Herold engaged a horse 
which he said he would call for at four o'clock. At 
4.15 Herold got his horse and left, saying he would be 
back by nine. At half-past six Atzerodt called for his 
mare and rode her until 7.15, when he returned her to 
Naylor's, asking, however, that she be kept saddled and 
bridled until ten. 1 At 7.30 he went to an oyster bay 
for supper and was summoned thence by some messenger 
of Booth's who knew his haunts 2 — probably Davy 
Herold. Booth was at the Herndon House (where 
Lewis Payne had been rooming since March 27th. 3 ), and 
there, doubtless in Payne's room, he had at eight o'clock 
a meeting of conspirators. Payne was there, and he was 
"told off" for the assassination of Secretary of State 
Seward. Atzerodt was there, and he was assigned to 
despatch the Vice-President Davy Herold may have 
been there 4 — probably was. John Surratt was not 
there, 8 he was in Elmira, N. Y. Arnold was not there, 



'C. T. p. 83, John Fletcher. 

2 Atzerodt's statement, see Appendix XVI. 

8 C. T. p. 154, Mrs. Martha Murray. Payne told Mrs. Murray, whose husband kept 
the Herndon House, that he was going to leave about four o'clock, April 14th; probably 
in the hope of establishing an alibi. But Atzerodt swore Payne was at the Herndon at 
eight o'clock and after, and Payne seems to have told his counsel he was. C. T. p. 314. 

4 Atzerodt does not mention Herold as present. 

6 Surratt Lecture, see Appendix VI: Note on John Surratt's Trial, see Appendix XVII. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 89 

he was clerking at Fortress Monroe. 1 O'Laughlin was 
not there; he was in Washington for the celebration, but 
he was fully accounted for all through the evening by 
many witnesses. 2 Mrs. Surratt was not there; she did 
not return from the country until 8.30, and was not out 
of the house after that. 3 Dr. Mudd, of course, was not 
there; he was not in Washington. 4 And Edward Spang- 
ler was not there; he was busy at the theatre. 8 So far 
as we know, only Booth and Payne and Atzerodt were 
present. Payne agreed to do the deed apportioned to 
him. Atzerodt refused to do the deed he was told to do, 
and was reviled by Booth, who called him a fool and 
said he would "be hung anyway." "And so," said 
Atzerodt, "we parted." Atzerodt then went to an 
oyster bay on the Avenue above Twelfth Street, where he 
stayed until about ten o'clock. 8 

This left only Booth and brawny young Lewis Payne 
to strike for what they believed "the cause." We can 
imagine the scene as John Booth, with frenzied eloquence, 
urged his few followers to their respective parts in his 



1 C. T. 234, 2 4°i 24 x i Eaton G. Horner, William S. Arnold, Frank Arnold, John W. 
Wharton. 

2 C. T. pp. 228, 232, Early, Murphy, Henderson, Loughran, Grillet, Purdy, Fuller, 
Giles. 

' C. T. p. 116, Weichmann. 

4 C. T. p. 200, Thomas Davis. 

6 C T. pp. 105, 109, James, Debonay, Giflord. 

•Atzerodt's statement, see Appendix XVI. 



90 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

awful plans — probably quoting for them the lines he 
so often spoke as Cassius: 

. . . How many ages hence, 
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er, 
In states unborn, and accents yet unknown ? 

Atzerodt, listening unmoved, sullen — personal safety his 
only thought; and Payne, the young gladiator, dogged, 
determined, caring little for fame but everything for 
his adored John Booth and much for the lost cause of 
his Southland; and Davy Herold, if he was there, prob- 
ably excited — he was an excitable boy and would have 
been appealed to by the danger and daring of the thing 
and the mad flight for life which he was to share. 

The play was well under way when the Presidential 
party got to the theatre. The scene on the stage as tr 
entered represented the after-dinner hour in an Eng" 
country house. The drawing-room was full of volu 
nously crinolined ladies whose ennui had just be 
relieved by the arrival of the gentlemen from their p( 
prandials in the dining-room. Miss Keene, as Florenc 
Trenchard, was trying to explain a joke to the dull Dur 
dreary. "Can't you see it?" she asked. No; h< 
could n't. " You can't see it ? " No. There was a sligr 
commotion as she spoke, and as Dundreary assured her f( 




Section of Americana, F. 11. Meaerve. 

Laura Keene 

»was lurking her last appearance in Washington, in "Our American 
Cousin," presented at Ford's Theatre on the evening Lincoln was 
assassinated. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 91 

the second time that he couldn't "see it," she looked 
up and saw the Presidential party entering the state box. 
"Well, everybody can see that!" she said, quickly im- 
provising and looking meaningly at the Chief Executive 
as she made a sweeping curtsey. 1 Then the orchestra 
struck up "Hail to the Chief," the audience cheered and 
cheered, and for several moments the play was at a 
standstill, while Mr. Lincoln bowed and smiled his 
appreciation of the ovation. 

When the party sat down, Mrs. Lincoln was on the 
President's right; Miss Harris next to her on her right; 
and nearest to the stage, sitting on the end of the sofa, 
was young Major Rathbone. 2 

During the next two hours the President moved from 
his seat but once, and that was to rise and put on his 
overcoat. The night was warm; no one else seemed to 
feel any chill; but something that did not strike the 
bared shoulders of the ladies in the box, made the tall, 
gaunt man in black broadcloth shiver — and he got up 
and put on his overcoat. 

Between 9.30 and 10 John Booth appeared at the 
stage-d^or leading his horse which he must have had to 



1 Told the present writer by Mr. George C. Maynard, then of the War Telegraph 
Office, now of the National Museum, who made a note of Miss Keene's interpolation 
on his programme at the time. 

2 C. T. p. 78, Major Rathbone. See Major Rathbone's statement, Appendix XVIII. 



92 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

saddle for himself, since all the theatre hands were busy 
at their respective posts. At the door he saw J. L. 
Debonay, who played what was called "responsible 
utility" at the theatre, taking the part that night of 
John Wigger, the gardener. To Debonay, John said: 
"Tell Spangler to come to the door and hold my horse." 
Debonay went across the stage to Spangler's position, 
which was on the same side with the President's box, 
while the stage-door was at the "prompt side," and said 
to Spangler: "Mr. Booth wants to see you." Spangler 
went to the stage door and explained to Mr. Booth that 
he could not hold his horse because Mr. Gifford, the 
stage-carpenter, was out in front and had left the respon- 
sibility of the next change on Spangler. "Tell Peanut 
John to come here and hold this horse," Spangler called 
to Debonay, " I have n't time." So Debonay called 
Peanuts, who was on duty at the stage door. Peanuts 
objected that he had his door to tend, but Spangler said 
it would be all right to hold the horse, but if there was 
anything wrong about it to lay the blame on him. Pea- 
nuts had a bench in the alley by the door, and as he sat 
there on guard he held the bridle-rein of Mr. Booth's 
horse. 

When he had left the horse in charge of Peanuts, John 
Booth went on the stage and inquired of Debonay if he 




Collection of Mr. Robert Coster. 

Abraham Lincoln about I860 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 93 

could cross it. Debonay said No; the dairy scene was 
on, and he would have to go down under the stage and 
come up on the other side. This Booth did, Debonay 
going with him under the stage, through the little side 
passage on the south end of the basement floor, and out 
on to Tenth Street. 1 

Now, Booth knew perfectly the situations of the play 
in progress — knew that in the second scene of the third 
act there was a brief time when only Asa Trenchard was 
on the stage and few of the other players were in the 
wings awaiting cues. This was his time to strike, and 
it occurred about twenty minutes past ten. 

After the curtain went up on the third act, Booth 
stepped to the front door where Buckingham, the door- 
keeper — his attention being directed for the moment 
to something in the house — had placed his right arm 
as a barrier across the doorway so that none might pass 
without his knowledge. Some one came up behind him, 
took two fingers of that hand and shook them, and Buck- 
ingham turned to look. It was Mr. John, smiling his 
boyish smile. "You don't want a ticket from me, do 
you?" he asked jocularly. And Buckingham smiled 
back at him and said he "guessed not" — just as he 
would have said to young Harry Ford. 

1 C. T. pp. 74, 8i, 105, Burroughs, John Miles, J. L. Debonay. 



94 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Booth went into the house, looked around, and came out 
almost immediately. When he returned to the door, 
Buckingham was talking to some out-of-town acquain- 
tances who were in the audience , and when the dis- 
tinguished young tragedian passed him the popular 
doorkeeper halted him and introduced his acquaintances, 
to whom, even in that awful hour, John made some 
genial remarks. 

He seems to have hovered about the door, nervously, for 
a quarter of an hour or more. Once he asked Buckingham 
the time; once he asked for a chew of tobacco and was 
accommodated. About ten minutes past ten he went into 
the restaurant on the south and took a drink of whisky, 
came quickly out, passed Buckingham at the door, hum- 
ming a tune as he went, ascended the stairs to the dress 
circle, and walked down along the south wall of the 
theatre close to the entrance of the President's box. 1 

One or two persons said they saw him standing there. 
One man (Captain Theodore McGowan) actually thought 
he saw Booth take out a visiting-card and hand it to the 
"President's messenger"; 2 he so testified at the conspiracy 
trial. There was, of course, no sentry at the door; no 
one was there. John Parker, who had gone to the theatre 



1 C. T. p. 73, John E. Buckingham. Buckingham's book, p. 13. Also Mr. Buck- 
ingham's statements to the present writer. 

2 C. T. p. 78, Captain McGowan. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 95 

as the President's guard, had left his post at the door to 
the passage-way, and gone to a seat in the dress circle, 
whence he could better see the play. Booth had no one to 
elude, no one to make pretext to; his movements were 
entirely unchallenged. The play waxed funnier and 
funnier, more and more absorbing. Every eye in the 
house was fixed otherwise than on that door — every eye 
but John Booth's. 1 

On the stage, there was a tart dialogue going on between 
Asa Trenchard and a designing old woman, Mrs. Mount- 
chessington, who presently flounced off with a taunt about 
Asa's unaccustomedness to society. 

"Society, eh?" said Asa, looking after her. "Well, I 
guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you darned old 
sockdolaging man-trap!" 2 

Shouts of laughter greeted this characteristic defence of 
"Our American Cousin," and while they were rolling across 
the footlights there mingled with them a sharper sound — 
a pistol report. Booth had stepped into the passage- 
way, dropped the bar of wood in place to hold the door 
against ingress, entered the box and, shouting Sic semper 
tyrannis," fired a Deringer pistol a few inches from the 
President's head. For a second or two the audience 



1 " Lincoln's Last Day," by Colonel W. H. Crook, Harper's Magazine. September. 
1907, p. 527. 

2 Statement of Harry Hawk (Asa Trenchard), see Appendix XIX. 



i p<> s<£* f»'4*s** ^'*\ 



96 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

thought the shooting was behind the scenes, a part of the 
play; not an eye turned toward the state box where Major 
Rathbone was grappling with the assassin. Booth 
had dropped his pistol when it was fired and drawn a 
large knife with which he slashed Major Rathbone, strik- 
ing for his breast but gashing instead the left arm which 
the major thrust up to parry the blow. Notwithstanding 
his wound, the major grabbed at the assassin as he was 
preparing to leap from the box to the stage fourteen feet 
below, but he was unable to hold him. All this happened 
in far fewer seconds than it takes to tell it, and almost 
before any one could realize that there was something 
wrong, Booth had jumped and fallen, his left leg doubled 
under him, was instantly up again and running across the 
front of the stage. Almost simultaneously, Mrs. Lincoln's 
heart-rending cry rang out and Major Rathbone shouted 
" Catch that man!" But, for a paralyzed moment, no one 
stirred. 1 

Impeded in his jump — which ordinarily would have 
been nothing to one of his athletic training — by Rath- 
bone's clutch, Booth had caught his spur in the Treasury 
flag, gashed the frame of Washington's picture, and broken 
the small bone of his left leg in the heavy fall. But he was 



1 C. T. pp. 76, 78, 79, Ferguson, Withers, Stewart. Statements of Major Rathbone 
and Miss Harris before Judge Olin, April 17th, see Appendix XX. " Diary of Booth," 
see Part III., p. 132. 




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THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 97 

down scarcely an appreciable moment, and before any one 
in the house or on the stage could realize what he had done, 
he had reached the prompt entrance and was running 
through the cleared passage leading to the stage door. 1 

Some of the spectators, when they got to thinking about 
it afterward, felt sure Booth stopped in the centre-front 
of the stage, brandished his dagger, and yelled "The South 
is avenged!" Some thought he shouted "Sic semper" 
as he struck the stage; some that he shouted it as he ran. 
Nobody really knows whether he said anything as he ran — 
certainly he did n't stop to say it! He was fleeing for his 
life and he wasted no time on speeches. He crossed the 
stage some feet in front of Harry Hawk (Asa Trenchard), 
ran between Miss Keene and W. J. Ferguson standing 
in the passage near the prompt entrance, 2 rushed past 
Withers, the orchestra leader, who was on his way to the 
stairs close by the back door, and as Withers stood stock 
still in his way, Booth struck at him with the knife, knock- 
ing him down, made a rush for the door, and was gone. 8 

Joseph B. Stewart, who sat in the front row on the right 
hand side of the orchestra almost directly under the Presi- 
dent's box, was the first man on the stage. He thought he 
was there a very few seconds after the shot was fired and 

1 C T. p. 76, Ferguson; Buckingham, p. 13. 

2 Interview with W. J. Ferguson, by Ada Patterson, in Theatre Magazine for May, 
1908. 

3 C. T. p. 79, William Withers. 



98 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

that he pursued Booth closely, being within thirty feet of 
him when he went out of the door. Others present felt 
equally sure that Stewart was not on the stage until Booth 
was off it, and no other testimony corroborated Stewart's 
account of the immediateness of his pursuit. He did, how- 
ever, rush after the fleeing assassin, shouting "Stop that 
man!" and whether he came as near to grasping Booth's 
bridle as he thought he did, he was in the alley soon after 
Booth had left it. 1 But before any one seemed to have 
sense to think of pursuit, the clattering of hoofs on the 
stone-paved alley had died away, and the President's 
murderer was swallowed up in the night. 2 

Meanwhile, in that upper box, the tall, gaunt man in 
the rocking-chair had not changed his position, the smile 
he wore over Asa's last sally had not even given place to 
a look of pain — so lightning-quick had unconsciousness 
come. The head was bent slightly forward, the eyes were 
closed; Mrs. Lincoln had clutched his arm, but had not 
moved from her seat; neither had Miss Harris. At the 
barred door to the passage-way many persons were pound- 
ing frantically, and Major Rathbone, staggering to the 
door, found the bar, removed it, and of those seeking 
admittance allowed several who represented themselves 
to be surgeons to come in. Another surgeon was lifted 

1 C. T. p. 79, Joseph B. Stewart. 

2 See Appendix XXI: Note about Edwin Booth in Boston. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 99 

up into the box from the stage, 1 and almost as soon as 
any to reach the scene of tragedy was Miss Keene, who 
took the President's head into her lap. 

There was a slight delay in locating the wound; some 
looked for it in the breast and tore open the President's 
shirt. Dr. Charles Taft, who had been lifted into the box, 
located the wound behind the left ear, and countermanded 
the order just given for the President's carriage. The ride 
over the then cobble-paved streets of Washington was not 
to be thought of, and Dr. Taft directed that instead the 
nearest bed be sought. He lifted the President's head 
from which the blood and brain tissue was oozing rapidly, 
and, others helping with the rest of the long, inert body, 
a shutter was impressed for service as a litter, and the 
horror-stricken little procession went along the upper 
lobby toward the stairs. At the head of the staircase, 
Major Rathbone, who was assisting Mrs. Lincoln, had to 
ask Major Potter to help him, as he was fainting from the 
loss of blood from his arm. 2 

Across Tenth Street from the theatre was the four- 
story brick house of William Peterson, a tailor, who sub- 
let most of the rooms to lodgers. The front door of the 
house was open when those bearing the dying President 
reached the street, and a man was standing on the steps. 

1 Dr. Charles Taft. See his statement in the Century Magazine, Feb. 1893, p. 634. 
2 C. T. p. 78, Rathbone. 



100 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Dr. Taft directed the other bearers thither and the man 
— Peterson — rushed in and shouted "The President is 
coming!" 1 Then he disappeared. He was a drunken, 
cruel fellow whose much-abused wife was on a brief visit 
to Baltimore. 

Down the stairs from the floors above came several 
young men lodgers, meeting the bearers as they entered the 
hall with their burden. At the end of the hall was a long, 
narrow bedroom whose tenant, a young soldier named 
Willie Clark, was not in. 2 On Willie's neat little bed the 
President was laid — cornerwise, as only that way could 
his great length be accommodated — and messengers 
were sent in every direction, for Captain Lincoln, for the 
members of the Cabinet, for the Surgeon-General, for the 
President's private physician, Dr. Stone, for his pastor, 
Dr. Gurley, of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, 
and for others whose right it was to share in the closing 
scenes of the great Emancipator's life. 

Up at the White House the evening passed quietly after 
the President and Mrs. Lincoln left for the theatre. An 
old college chum had called on Captain Robert and stayed, 

1 Statement to the present writer by Mr. Henry Ulke, portrait painter, who was then 
one of the lodgers in the Peterson house. Mr. Ulke and his brother went up and down 
the basement stairs all night, carrying bottles which they constantly re-filled with hot 
water; the surgeons laid these bottles along the President's limbs in the hope of relax- 
ing their rigour. 

2 See Willie Clark's letter, Appendix XXII. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 101 

talking and smoking in the captain's room, until about 
ten o'clock. He had just gone when one of the sergeants 
pf the Invalid Corps, who was doing duty at the White 
House, rang the bell and told Tom Pendel, who opened the 
door, that an attempt had been made to kill Secretary 
Seward by cutting his throat. Pendel thought the rumour 
a false one, arising with some person who did not know of 
the Secretary's broken jaw. In a few minutes, however, 
the sergeant returned, rang again, and said it was true 
about Mr. Seward. 1 

It was a little after half-past ten when Pendel, looking 
out, saw a number of excited persons hurrying toward the 
east gate of the White House. In the lead were Senators 
Sumner, Stewart, and Conness, who had just come from 
Secretary Seward's house on a run. 2 Sumner asked 
Pendel, who went out to see what the matter was, for news 
of the President, and Pendel said: "Mr. Senator, I wish 
you would go down to the theatre and see if anything has 
happened." 

Just then there was the sound of furious driving; 
a carriage turned in at the north gate of the White House 
grounds and hardly slackened speed as it approached 
the portico. Captain Robert Lincoln, who had not yet 
retired, heard the approach of the carriage and stepped 

1 " Tliirty-six Years in the White House," by Thomas C. Pendel, pp. 40-45. 

2 " Reminiscences of W. M. Stewart," p. iqi. 



102 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

to the open window of his room to look out. He saw 
several persons alight in evident excitement, and his 
immediate thought was that they were come on one of 
those life or death errands which brought so many frantic 
petitioners to the White House at all sorts of hours; it 
being a strict rule of the President that they were to be 
admitted without delay and brought to him, no matter 
what time they came. Not many ever came in vain, 
and Captain Lincoln felt regretful that this time anxious 
petitioners for a life must turn away disappointed — or 
wait. 1 

No one knows, to this day, who was in that carriage, 
or if any one does he has not gone on record. Pendel 
says it was Isaac Newton, the Commissioner of Agricul- 
ture; Senator Stewart says "one of the attaches of the 
White House"; Captain Lincoln says he has n't the least 
idea who it was. But somebody, fresh from Tenth 
Street, brought the news of the assassination, and Senator 
Conness said: "This is a conspiracy to murder the entire 
Cabinet." 2 And he ordered the sergeants on duty to 
" Go immediately to Secretary Stanton's house and 
prevent his assassination if possible." The soldiers 
started instantly and ran at top speed until they reached 
Stanton's house where, according to Senator Stewart, 

1 Told by Mr. Robert Lincoln to the present writer. 

2 Stewart, p. iqi. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 103 

they saw "a man on the steps who had just rung the 
bell. Seeing them he took fright and ran away and was 
never afterward heard of. When the soldiers ran up the 
steps Stanton himself had come to the door in response 
to the ring. Had the soldiers been a few minutes later I 
have no doubt that Stanton also would have been one of 
the victims of the plot." 

The three Senators went directly to Tenth Street. 
The messengers, accompanied by Pendel, went upstairs to 
break the news to Captain Lincoln and get him to go 
immediately to the Peterson house. Pendel says it was 
he who told, and that what he said was: "Captain, there 
has something happened to the President. You had 
better go down to the theatre and see what it is." Captain 
Lincoln understoood that his father had been shot. 
"Where?" he asked. "In the arm," he thought some- 
body told him. "That is nothing," he said. "I am 
grateful that he got off so easy." And he quite cheer- 
fully made ready to go to his father. Major Hay, who 
roomed at the White House, was also informed, and 
immediately made ready to obey the summons to Tenth 
Street. As he was leaving, he gave Pendel orders to 
allow no one to enter the White House. 

Pendel knew the seriousness of the President's con- 
dition, if not the hopelessness of it, and it was with stream- 



104 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

ing eyes and a breaking heart that he took up his position 
at the door. Presently there was a sound of some one 
coming to the east door downstairs and up the inner 
stairway from the basement. Pendel turned to look, 
and in a moment a small figure rushed at him in a wild 
abandon of grief. It was poor little Tad, who had heard 
the awful news at Grover's Theatre. He buried his 
head in the breast of his kind crony, the doorkeeper, 
and sobbed, "O Tom Pen! Tom Pen! they've killed 
my papa dead — they 've killed my papa dead!" 

It was almost midnight when Pendel got the little lad 
sufficiently pacified to go upstairs to bed. Up there, in 
the room that seemed so empty of the great, kind presence 
that was always, no matter what sorrows oppressed it, 
full of tender playfulness with Tad, the doorkeeper 
undressed the inconsolable boy and helped him into 
bed, then lay down beside him soothing him and talking 
to him till he fell asleep. 1 

It was a little before ten o'clock when a man came 
hurriedly to the door of Justice Cartter, who lived on 
Fifteenth Street near H, and asked if Surgeon-General 
Barnes were there. The messenger had come from 
the Surgeon-General's residence in all haste to fetch 
the doctor to Secretary Seward's. The Surgeon-General 

1 Told by Pendel to the present writer. 




Collection of Americana, F. 11. Meserve. 

Lixcolx and His Son, 'Fad 
Said to have been made shortly before the assassination 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 105 

had been playing whist in the library, and hearing the 
inquiry for him he came into the hall and asked what 
was the matter. When told that an attempt had been 
made to assassinate Secretary Seward, he and Justice 
Cartter at once went around the corner to Mr. Seward's 
house, where they found a scene of indescribable horror 
and confusion. 1 

Less than half an hour ago Lewis Payne had come to 
the Seward house. William Bell, a coloured boy who was 
"second waiter," went to the door, and when it was 
opened Payne stepped inside. "He had a little package 
in his hand; he said it was medicine for Mr. Seward 
from Dr. Verdi, and that he was sent by Dr. Verdi to 
direct Mr. Seward how to take it." Bell told him he 
could not go upstairs — that it was against orders for 
anybody to be allowed up — but if Payne would give 
him the medicine and tell him the directions, he would 
take it up and tell Mr. Seward's nurse. All the time 
Bell was expostulating Payne was walking along the 
hall toward the stairs, the medicine in his left hand and 
his right hand in the pocket of his light overcoat. His 
manner was so convincing that the coloured boy began 
to believe himself wrong in barring the way, and followed 
Payne up the stairs, begging pardon for having told him 

1 Buckingham, p. ig. 



106 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

he must not go up. "Oh, I know, that 's all right!" 
Payne assured him, and went on — Bell at his heels en- 
treating him not to walk so heavily. 

At the top of the stairs Payne encountered Mr. Fred- 
erick Seward, a son of the Secretary, and when the mes- 
sage about the medicine was repeated to Mr. Frederick 
he went into his father's room, coming out almost imme- 
diately with word that the Secretary was asleep and the 
medicine could not be delivered to him now. There was 
an argument lasting perhaps five minutes, then Payne 

turned on his heel saying: "Well, if I cannot see him " 

and started down the stairs preceded by Bell. They 
had gone but a few steps when Payne turned back, made 
a rush at Mr. Frederick, severely wounding him in the 
head with the butt of a pistol which broke in the furious 
blows. Mr. Frederick fell back into his sister's room. 
She screamed, and aroused another brother, Major 
Augustus H. Seward, who had retired at 7.30, expecting 
to be called at eleven to sit up with his father. Sergeant 
George F. Robinson, who was acting as nurse to the 
Secretary, opened the door of the Secretary's room at 
the sound of the scuffle in the hall, and was immediately 
struck in the forehead by Payne's heavy knife, and held 
aside while Payne rushed into the dimly-lighted room 
and threw himself upon the prostrate Secretary, striking 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 107 

wildly at his victim's neck with the knife. When Major 
Seward reached his father's room and saw the "two 
men, one trying to hold the other," his first thought was 
that his father had become delirious and attacked his 
nurse. So he seized the uppermost man and dragged 
him off, but soon discovered from the man's size and 
strength that he was not the Secretary. Then Major 
Seward thought Sergeant Robinson had gone out of his 
mind, and he made a heroic effort to get this infuriated 
person out of the room so as not further to endanger or 
alarm the Secretary. 

While this encounter was in progress the assailant 
kept striking at Major Seward's head and repeating in 
an intense voice "I 'm mad! I 'm mad!" On reaching 
the hall he gave a sudden turn and sprang away, disap- 
pearing down the stairs, but not before he had also 
wounded Emrick W. Hansell, another nurse. 

During those few bloody minutes that Payne was 
upstairs, Bell had run to give the alarm, and was just 
returning to the house when he saw Payne rush down 
the steps, spring on to a horse, and ride north to I Street, 
west to Fifteen-and-a-half Street, and thence at a 
gallop into Vermont Avenue. 

When General Barnes and Justice Cartter got to the 
house they found Dr. Verdi already there attending to 



108 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

the five wounded men, of whom the Secretary was the 
least seriously hurt, because the assailant's knife had 
struck the steel frame binding the fractured jaw, and 
glanced off without inflicting the mortal hurt it must 
otherwise have accomplished. 1 

General Barnes was occupied with the Secretary and 
his gravely wounded son, Mr. Frederick, Dr. Verdi 
dressing the hurts of the others, when a "night liner" 
(hack) was driven rapidly to the door and the bell was 
violently pulled. Justice Cartter went to the door and 
found the negro hackman who said that the President 
had been shot and taken to a house on Tenth Street, and 
that he had been sent to fetch General Barnes to the 
President's bedside The hackman had been sent to 
General Barnes's house, thence to Justice Cartter's, where 
he was told of the assault on Secretary Seward, and was 
now here and very thoroughly frightened. 

Justice Cartter went to Mr. Seward's room, called 
General Barnes aside, and told him of the demand for his 
presence at another bedside. Explanation was then 
made to Major Seward for their abrupt leaving, and 
Justice and Surgeon-General hurried into the hack 
telling the driver not to spare his horses. But the negro 
was so panic-stricken that he declared he would n't drive 

1 C T. pp. 154, 157, W. H. Bell, George F. Robinson, Major Augustus Seward, Sur- 
geon-General Barnes, Doctor T. S. Verdi. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 109 

back into that crowd around Tenth Street for all the 
money in Washington. Whereupon Justice Cartter, a 
powerful man, jumped out of the carriage, seized the 
negro from the box, thrust him inside with General 
Barnes, mounted the driver's seat, and drove furiously 
toward Tenth Street. At Eleventh and F, the guard 
already in effect to keep back the frantic populace from 
the scene of the tragedy attempted to hold them, but 
the Justice, shouting that the Surgeon-General was 
inside, never slackened until he pulled up in front of the 
Peterson house. 1 

Secretaries Stanton and Welles were already there, as 
were Captain Lincoln and Major Hay, and all looked 
anxiously to the Surgeon-General to see if he could not 
give some more hopeful diagnosis than that already given 
by Dr. Taft and Dr. Stone. But the Surgeon-General, 
carefully and tenderly noting where the ball had entered 
and the course it took (obliquely upward to a point 
behind the right eye), could only shake his head sadly. 
He could not say how long the President's great vitality 
might fight off dissolution, but there was no possible 
hope — none. 2 

Soon Senators Sumner, Stewart, and Conness came, 
and General Barnes told them that while they were 

1 Buckingham, p. 20. 

2 C. T. p. 81 Dr. Stone. 



110 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

privileged to enter the President's death-chamber, being 
Senators, "there are too many people in there hastening 
the President's death." Whereupon Senators Stewart 
and Conness retired, but Sumner rushed into the little 
room declaring: "I will go in. Nothing could keep 
Charles Sumner out." 1 

Outside, the city seethed with excitement. Rumours 
grew wilder and wilder as the night grew old. When 
the papers went to press at two o'clock it was impossible 
for them to say just what had really happened 2 except 
that a man, declared by some to be John Wilkes Booth, 
an actor, had fatally shot the President, and a man 
believed to be John H. Surratt had stabbed the Secretary 
of State. Rumours of Grant's assassination on the train 
which was carrying him north were rife. Rumours of a 
vast conspiracy to kill all the heads of Government, to burn 
and sack Washington, to install Jefferson Davis in the 
White House, were passing from mouth to mouth and 
growing, as they passed, like genii out of a bottle. There 
was a frenzy of feeling against the South, against actors, 
against Copperheads. 

The panic-stricken mob in Ford's Theatre had begun 

1 Stewart, p. 192. 

s The National Intelligencer, Washington, when it went to press at 2 A. m., said: 
" Rumours are so thick, the excitement of this hour is so intense, that we rely entirely 
upon our reporters to advise the public of the details and results of this night of horrors. 
Evidently conspirators are among us." Appendix XXIII: Note on despatches of the night. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 111 

to shout: "Burn the theatre!" when they realized that it 
was the assassin of the President who had fled across 
the stage. And the same unthinking fury characterized 
many of the mobs that surged through the streets all night. 
The one voice that hushed them, that stayed violence, was 
the voice of that man in any crowd who would climb 
anything that might elevate him where he could be heard, 
and entreat: "Hush! Stop! What would Mr. Lincoln 
say if he could talk to you ?"* 

The proprietor of the National Hotel, who had been in 
the audience at Ford's Theatre, was a noted shot. When 
he saw the man leap from the President's box he stood up 
and cried : "That man has shot the President' Somebodv 
give me a pistol." But before any one could get a pistol 
to him, the mad rush across the stage was over — the man 
had gone. Into the office of the National Hotel about two 
in the morning, came soldiers saying the man — the 
assassin — was John Booth. " Impossible '."they told the 
soldiers — these men who knew John Booth so well. 
And all night long, that night of terror, they watched the 
door for John to come in — to come walking blithely in as 
was his wont, and give the lie to this foul story. 2 

Up on Tenth Street it was quiet. Cavalry patrolled E 
and F Streets as far as Ninth Street on the east and 

1 Stewart, p. 193. 

2 Told the present writer by Mr. Burton. 



112 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Eleventh Street on the west, and kept at bay every one 
who had not urgent business within those lines. 

The parlour floor of the Peterson house had a front and 
a back parlour and a bedroom at the end of a long, narrow 
hall. In the front parlour, on a sofa, Mrs. Lincoln sat, 
comforted as best he could by young Captain Lincoln, who 
came from time to time from his mother's side into the 
chamber of death. At long intervals Mrs. Lincoln went 
into the room where her husband lay, but was unable to 
stay for more than a few moments at a time. 1 

In the back parlour, which was often used as a bedroom 
and then had in it a bed not made up, Secretary Stanton 
sat at a small table commanding a view of the hallway 
and all who approached the little room at the end. There 
he wrote despatches announcing the tragedy, there he sat 
and questioned the first obtainable witnesses — Corporal 
James Tanner taking down the testimony, and Assistant- 
Secretary of War Charles A. Dana directing the sending 
of orders for precaution (particularly in the case of General 
Grant) and for the arrest of persons mentioned as likely 
to have complicity in the two murderous deeds. 2 

Through the house, above the soft footfalls of those 
ministering to the dying, above the hushed tones of Stanton 

1 Statements of Mr. Field, Major Rathbone, Miss Harris. See Appendices 
XXIV, XVIII, XX. 

2 Oldroyd, pp. 35~37- 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 113 

and Dana, above the sobbing of Mrs. Lincoln, sounded the 
incessant moaning, the stertorous breathing of the Pres- 
ident. He was entirely unconscious, not the faintest 
glimmer of understanding had come to him since the bullet 
ploughed its way through his brain. He never knew what 
sped him hence. He was here, smiling at long-delayed 
peace, and then he was There, smiling in peace never- 
ending. In the interval his long, gaunt body — aged by 
the four years of war more than most men age in a score 
of years 1 — lay diagonally across the low-posted walnut 
bed in Willie Clark's little 9 x 17 foot room. There was 
striped wall paper on the walls, and a few pictures: a 
cheap copy of Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair," a copy of 
Herring's "The Village Blacksmith," and copies of "The 
Stable" and "The Barnyard" by the same artist, also a 
photograph of Ida, Clara, and Nannie Clark — Willie's 
sisters. On the table were cushions worked for Willie 
by his sisters Ida and Clara. 

At a quarter before two Mrs. Lincoln went into the little 
room. The President was quiet then — the moaning, 
the struggling motion of the long arms, were over. She 



1 No words could tell the story of those years as do the life and death masks of Lincoln, 
the one made in Chicago, by Volk, shortly after Mr. Lincoln's election, and the other 
in the White House, soon after his death. The present writer, holding a copy of one in 
each hand, in the magnificent Lincoln library of Major W. H. Lambert, of Philadelphia, 
felt as never before what the war must have meant to the man whose face it so awe. 
somely altered. 



114 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

stayed until ten minutes after two, when she returned to her 
sofa in the parlour. At three o'clock she went in again 
for a few moments. At 3.35 Dr. Gurley knelt by the bed- 
side and prayed. At six o'clock the pulse began to fail. 
At 6.30 the laboured breathing was heard again. At 7 
the physicians announced signs of immediate dissolution, 
and at 7.22 the faint pulse ceased, 1 the last breath fluttered 
from between the parted lips, and Stanton's voice broke 
the unbearable stillness saying: "Now he belongs to the 
ages." 2 

Dr. Gurley knelt again and prayed, after which he went 
into the front parlour and prayed with Mrs. Lincoln, 
presently assisting her to enter the death-chamber and, 
leaning upon her son, look on the still face of the dead 
Chief. 

Three squares away, in a small bedroom in the 
Kirkwood House, sleeping in a drunken stupor, lay the 
unshaven, unkempt, unheeding man into whose hands the 
deed of mad John Booth had given the reins of 
government. 3 

At nine o'clock the body of the President was placed in 
a temporary coffin, wrapped in an American flag, and 



1 Minutes of Dr. Ezra W. Abbott, attending physician. 

2 "Life of Lincoln," by Ida M. Tarbell, vol. iv., p. 40; Nicolay and Hay, "Life of 
Lincoln," vol. x. pp. 285, et seq. O. R. Series I, vol. xlvi., part iii., pp. 780, 784. 

3 Stewart, p. 94. 

tiiitoiZ Shorn ,'o s«"« 7k» '* *" *'** iX **" 

ti s ie ^(*<L« uJ*/> ~«~~- ***** u '"^ 

be*-* sou* 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 115 

borne by six soldiers to a hearse. Then, very quietly, with 
only a tiny escort, moving through to G Street, the return 
to the White House was made. A spring rain had been 
falling since early morning, and the gay buntings that 
were so soon to be replaced with the trappings of woe 
wore a bedraggled look as the hero of peace went past. 



PART III 

THE PENALTY 






III. 



THE PENALTY 



w 



HEN Booth left the alley behind Ford's Theatre 
and dashed into F Street, he probably rode down 



F to Seventh, along Seventh to the Avenue, down the Ave- 
nue (afterward it was said the horse had been heard gallop- 
ing past the National Hotel) to the Peace Monument, and 
around the south side of the Capitol, then south and east 
to the Navy Yard bridge over the eastern branch of the 
Potomac. 

At the bridge he was halted by Sergeant Silas T. Cobb, 
who detained him for three or four minutes while he asked 
his name, residence, and destination. Booth gave answers 
that satisfied the sergeant, even when asked why he tried 
to get out of town when he must know that no one was 
allowed to pass after nine o'clock; to this Booth said that 
as it was a dark night he had thought to wait a little later 
than the usual time and have the light of the moon to ride 
home by. The moon was just rising as they parleyed, and 
the sergeant told Mr. Booth — who gave his right name 
— to pass. 

119 



120 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

In ten minutes or thereabouts another man rode up and 
Was challenged. He said his name was Smith, that he lived 
at White Plains, and that the reason he was late was, he 
had been in bad company. This was Davy Herold, and 
he was close under the shadow of his own home where his 
mother and sisters were sleeping. 1 

Soon a third horseman rode furiously up and inquired if 
a man riding a roan horse had gone that way. This was 
Fletcher, the liveryman, who had chased Davy Herold thus 
far from the corner of Fourteenth and the Avenue, to de- 
mand the immediate return of his horse which Davy was 
riding. The sergeant told this man he might pass if he 
insisted, but that he could not return until morning; so 
Fletcher turned reluctantly back, and at the corner of E 
and Fourteenth Streets, where he stopped to speak to the 
foreman of another stable, he was told that "President 
Lincoln is shot and Secretary Seward is almost dead," 
and advised that he would "better keep in." It was then 
after one o'clock, he said. If it was, he must have 
loitered, for he had ridden only about six miles. 2 

After leaving the bridge in Anacostia, Maryland (the 
south end of the Navy Yard bridge), Booth turned to the 
left and rode up a hill called Good Hope Hill, half way up 
the ascent of which he stopped Polk Gardiner, a farmer 

» C. T. p. 84, Silas T. Cobb. 
»C. T. p. 83, John Fletcher. 




Collection of Americana, 1". 11. Meserve. 



The House on Tenth Street, Washington, D. C, in Whn 
Lincoln Died 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 121 

lad hastening to the bedside of his dying father, and asked 
if a horseman had passed. Half a mile nearer to the 
bridge Gardiner passed Davy. There were several team- 
sters in the road just then, and Davy directed a general 
inquiry at them as to whether a horseman had passed. He 
probably overtook Booth in ten minutes or thereabouts. 1 

Booth, it must be remembered, had broken the fibula 
or small bone of his left leg, in his fall to the stage and was 
suffering the most excruciating torture as he rode, the 
splintered bone tearing into the flesh at every move. 

Polk Gardiner told Booth the road to Marlboro was the 
straight road ahead, but at the top of Good Hope Hill 
Booth and Herold turned to the right into the road to 
Surrattsville, thirteen miles southeast of Washington. 
Here they roused the tavern-keeper — Mrs. Surratt's 
tenant — from a drunken stupor and Herold went into the 
bar-room where he called for the carbines he and John 
Surratt and Atzerodt had left there five or six weeks before 
in their preparations for the President's abduction on 
March 16th. Herold got a bottle of whisky and took it out 
to Booth as he sat on his horse in the yard; the second 
carbine, however, Booth refused to take, saying he could 
not carry it. Herold got, too, the field-glasses belonging 
to Booth, which were the contents of the small package 

»C. T. p. 8s, Polk Gardiner. 



122 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Mrs. Surratt had left there that afternoon. Herold paid 
Lloyd for the whisky and as they were leaving (they stayed 
only about five minutes) the man who had not come in 
said — or, so, at least, Lloyd swore, although he 
admitted he was "right smart in liquor that afternoon, and 
after night I got more so" — "I will tell you some news if 
you want to hear it: I am pretty certain that we have 
assassinated the President and Secretary Seward." 1 

When soldiers, on Saturday and Sunday, asked Lloyd 
if two men had stopped there or passed that way Friday 
night, he said he had not seen them; but the following 
Saturday, when the Secretary of War's bulletin was out 
announcing $100,000 reward for the apprehension of 
Booth, Herold, and John Surratt, Mr. Lloyd began to have 
a squeamish conscience and hastened to put the Govern- 
ment in possession of his valuable knowledge. 

Booth and Herold rode away from Surrattsville in the 
bright moonlight, and instead of turning to the west at the 
cross-roads and taking the much-nearer road to Port 
Tobacco, where they hoped to cross the Potomac on Atze- 
rodt's boat and get into Virginia, they were obliged to turn 
eastward to Upper Marlboro, for Booth had determined 
to go to Dr. Mudd's house to get his broken bone set. 

Five miles from Surrattsville they galloped through the 



'C. T. p. 8 S , John M. Lloyd. 




The Alley Behind Ford's Theatre, Washington, D. C. 






THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 123 

little village of T. B. out of which six roads branch in as 
many directions. If they roused any one here, at one 
o'clock, to inquire their way, we do not know it. The 
next we know of them is at four o'clock Saturday morning, 
when Davy Herold stood knocking at Dr. Samuel Mudd's 
front door. Dr. and Mrs. Mudd were sleeping in a back 
room downstairs, and Dr. Mudd, who was not feeling 
well, asked Mrs. Mudd if she would mind seeing who it 
was — a knock at a country doctor's door at that hour 
being, doubtless, much less alarming than a knock at an 
ordinary residence door would have been. Mrs. Mudd 
replied: "I would rather you would go and see for your- 
self." So the doctor got up and went to the door in his 
night clothes. In the yard were two men and two horses; 
one man was mounted and the other, who had knocked, 
was holding both horses by the bridles. The dismounted 
man said the other had broken his leg and desired medical 
attendance, to which the doctor readily acceded and 
returned to his room to put on some clothing and ask Mrs. 
Mudd to tear bandages for him. While she was doing this, 
the doctor and the uninjured man got the injured man off 
his horse and carried him into the parlour, where the doctor 
cut the long riding-boot off the swollen foot — or, rather^ 
cut a slit about twelve inches long from the instep upward, 
so the boot would come off over the swollen ankle — and 



124 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

found that the fracture was about two inches above the 
instep. After dressing the injured leg, Dr. Mudd granted 
the man's request for a little rest, and helped his compan- 
ion to carry him upstairs and put him to bed. Then the 
horses were put up, and Dr. Mudd went back to bed and 
to sleep. 

At 7.30, breakfast being ready, the doctor sent a servant 
upstairs to tell the uninjured young man, who said his 
name was Tyson, that he was asked to join the family at 
table. Mrs. Mudd, meanwhile, was busying herself in the 
kitchen with a tray for the sick man which she sent up to 
him by a servant. 

At breakfast "Tyson" asked the doctor some questions 
about people in lower Maryland, and betrayed so much 
acquaintance with the region that Mrs. Mudd asked him 
if he were a native of it. He replied: "No, ma'am, but 
I have been frolicking around for five or six months." 
Whereupon Mrs. Mudd reminded him that "all play and 
no work makes Jack a bad boy. Your father ought to 
make you go to work." "My father is dead," he 
answered, " and I am ahead of the old lady." He seemed, 
Mrs. Mudd said, "not to have a care in the world." He 
told the doctor he and his companion, whom he called 
Tyler, were on their way to the river, and asked which was 
the nearest road. The doctor took him out into the yard 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 125 

and pointed the road out to him. Then "Tyson" went 
upstairs and probably slept, for nothing further was heard 
of the strangers till dinner-time. "Tyson " ate dinner with 
the family and seemed to relish it keenly, but the man 
upstairs sent back untouched all the food that went to him 
for breakfast and for dinner. At dinner "Tyson" asked 
the doctor if he could get a carriage in the neighbourhood 
to carry his friend away, and the doctor replied that he 
was going to Bryantown after dinner to get the mail and 
see some patients, and if "Tyson " cared to go with him he 
would see what could be done about a carriage. After 
they left, Mrs. Mudd, having asked if she might go up to 
see the sick man and received cordial permission, took to 
his room a tray with some cake, a couple of oranges, and 
a glass of wine, and asked the man, whose face was turned 
to the wall, if there was anything she could do for him. 
He asked for brandy, but there was none in the house, and 
as he showed no disposition to talk, Mrs. Mudd went down- 
stairs and busied herself in the preparations for Easter 
then going on in her kitchen. 

In a little while "Tyson" came back and rapped on the 
kitchen window. He said he and the doctor had gone to 
the home of the doctor's father and asked the loan of the 
family carriage; but the morrow being Easter the carriage 
was needed to take the ladies to church. So "Tyson" 



126 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

concluded to try the horses and, leaving Dr. Mudd on the 
road to Bryantown, returned. He went upstairs, and 
Mrs. Mudd heard him and his companion moving around 
the room. In a short time they came downstairs, the 
injured man hobbling on a stick which "Tyson" had 
obtained of the Mudds' gardener. Mrs. Mudd was 
standing in the hall at the foot of the stairs when they came 
down, and she noticed that the heavy whiskers "Tyler" 
wore were false, for they became partially detached as he 
hobbled painfully down the stairs. Above the heavy 
whiskers the black eyes bespoke such agony that Mrs. 
Mudd begged "Tyson" not to take his suffering friend 
away. "If he suffers much we won't go far," said 
"Tyson." "I will take him to my lady-love's, not far from 
here." He helped the crippled man into the saddle, 
mounted his own horse, and they rode away. 

An hour later Dr. Mudd returned from Bryantown and 
told his wife he had heard there of the assassination of the 
President, and that there were soldiers in Bryantown and 
all about looking for the assassin, who was believed to 
have crossed the Navy Yard bridge into Maryland. As 
he talked he said: "Those men who were here were 
suspicious characters. I will go to Bryantown and 
tell the officers." But Mrs. Mudd, although she agreed 
with him about the men and told him of the false whiskers, 




p 

o 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 127 

begged him not to go and leave her alone — to send word 
to the soldiers from church to-morrow. This he did, 
telling his distant cousin, Dr. George A. Mudd, under 
whom he had studied medicine, about the circumstances 
of the two men's stay at his house; and Dr. George Mudd 
told Lieutenant Dana on Monday morning — a degree of 
unhaste which is the worst thing wherewith Dr. Samuel 
Mudd is chargeable. 1 

At that time it was said the assassin of the President 
"was supposed to be a man named Booth," but he was 
believed by many not to have got out of Washington. The 
assailant of Secretary Seward was reported to be a noted 
desperado and guerrilla named Boyle. Dr. Samuel Mudd 
was quoted as having said, on hearing Booth mentioned in 
connection with the murder, that he believed he could 
recognize the injured man who had been at his house as 
John Booth, whom he had last seen in Washington on the 
twenty-third of December. 2 

On Saturday, the 15th, after leaving Dr. Mudd's, Booth 
and Herold were able to proceed but slowly, owing to 
Booth's extreme weakness and suffering. They lost their 



1 " Life of Dr. Mudd," pp. 30-32, 46. Lieutenant David Dana reached Piscataway at 
seven Saturday morning, and shortly afterward telegraphed the War Office that he had 
"reliable information that the person who murdered (?) Secretary Seward is Boyce or 
Boyd, the man who killed Captain Watkins in Maryland." O. R. Series I, vol. ilvi. 
part iii, p. 767. 

2 " Life of Mudd," pp. 46-47. 



128 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

way once, and Herold went to a negro cabin and got its 
occupant, Oswald Swann, to go with them as guide to the 
house of Colonel Cox, which they did not reach until one 
o'clock. 

Colonel Samuel Cox was a man whose Confederate 
sympathies were at least sufficiently ardent and dependable 
for him to have been apprised of the plot to abduct Presi- 
dent Lincoln. Dr. Mudd seems also to have known of 
that plot, and he may have told Colonel Cox. Also, if 
the abduction scheme were ever talked over between 
Booth and Dr. Mudd, the doctor may have told Booth that 
Colonel Cox was one of the men on the way to the Potomac 
who could be relied on for assistance. Or Herold may 
have heard something to that effect in his "skylarking" 
about that country. 

At any rate Colonel Cox, who had heard when the mail 
came, toward evening on Saturday, of the President's 
assassination, and who was deeply horrified thereby, was 
roused from his sleep about one o'clock Sunday morning 
by loud rapping with the old brass knocker on his front 
door. On the porch, or gallery, stood a young man who 
asked hospitality for himself and his wounded companion. 
The youth refused to give their names, and Colonel Cox 
told him he could not take in strangers of whom he knew 
nothing, because the assassin of the President was at large 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 129 

and the country thereabouts was beginning to be searched 
by soldiers. 

So Davy went back and reported this to John, who was 
waiting in the yard, and Colonel Cox's usually hospitable 
door was shut and bolted, and the Colonel went back to 
bed. Out in the moonlit yard the two fugitives consulted 
desperately. Then they paid Oswald Swann ten dollars 
and dismissed him; and when he was gone, back toward 
Bryantown, they found their way to a gully about half a 
mile from Colonel Cox's house, and there lay, trembling 
with apprehension. 

Sunday morning — Easter Sunday morning — as 
Colonel Cox was riding about his farm, he came upon them. 
They must have recognized him from afar, for they did 
not shoot. When he saw the helplessness and the acute 
suffering of Booth his heart was touched, and it was when 
he saw that, probably, that Booth disclosed their identity 
and threw himself and his companion on the colonel's 
mercy. Cox's reprehension of Booth's awful deed was 
the first shock the mad, misguided young murderer had, 
his first bitter taste of the world's malediction instead 
of that grateful praise he had so confidently expected. 
Colonel Cox agreed, nevertheless, to give them the protec- 
tion he had promised before their revelation, and con- 
ducted them to a pine thicket about a mile and a half from 



130 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

his home. Returning to the house, he sent a white farm- 
hand to Huckleberry Farm to fetch Thomas A. Jones, his 
foster-brother. 1 

Jones said afterward that he suspected something 
wrong, as he had heard the evening before of the President's 
assassination; but he was hardly prepared to be told that 
the assassin was there and that he was to take care of him. 
Colonel Cox directed him to the thicket and told him to 
give a certain whistle as a signal, so he might reach the 
men without being shot. 

Herold came out of the dense pines on hearing the 
whistle, and when he had received Jones's explanations 
conducted him to where Booth lay on the ground wrapped 
in blankets, his face drawn with great pain. Booth asked 
Jones a great many questions as to what people thought 
of the assassination, and appeared, Jones thought, to be 
proud of what he had done. "I at the time," Jones 
afterward admitted, "thought he had done a great act; 
but, great God! I soon saw that it was the worst blow 
ever struck for the South." 

Jones carried food to the fugitives and took them the 
papers. 2 He told them he would let them know the minute 



1 For details of Booth's flight after leaving Dr. Mudd's, up to the time he crossed the 
Rappahannock, the writer is indebted chiefly to the painstaking research of Mr. Osborn 
H. Oldroyd who, in iooi, walked over the entire ground traversed by Booth and Herold, 
and talked with many surviving persons who had assisted them in their flight. 

2 See Appendix XXV: Note on Southern horror of Booth's deed. 







Lincoln's Funeral Car 




Collection of Americana, F. H. Meserve. 

President Lincoln's Hears e 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 131 

it was safe for them to emerge from their thicket and 
attempt to cross the Potomac. And there, on the property, 
not of Colonel Cox, but of Captain Michael Stone Robert- 
son, Booth and Herold lay until the night of Friday, 
April 21st, just a week after Booth's crime. 1 

It was while he lay there and knew the surrounding 
country to be full of soldiers searching for him — while 
he could hear the neighing of the cavalry horses ridden 
in hot pursuit of him, and had to order his own horse 
and Herold's sent away and shot by Cox's overseer, 
Franklin A. Roby, lest their answering neigh betray 
the hiding-place — that he made two entries in his litttle 
red-leather-bound diary which he carried in an inner 
pocket and in the back of which he had the photographs 
of half a dozen pretty girls. He dated the first entry 
"April 13, 14, Friday the Ides," writing that date around 
the words "Te amo," evidently of long previous inscrip- 
tion at some happier time when he was practising love 
messages in Latin. 

"Until to-day," that first entry says, "nothing was 
ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For 
six months we had worked to capture. But our cause 
being almost lost, something decisive and great must be 
done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not 
strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly, 

1 Buckingham, pp. 64-65. 



132 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step 
through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but 
pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted Sic 
semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I 
passed all his pickets. Rode sixty miles [sic] that night, 
with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. 

" I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. 
Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God 
simply made me the instrument of his punishment. 

"The country is not what it was. This forced Union 
is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of 
me. I have no desire to outlive my country. This 
night (before the deed) I wrote a long article and left it 
for one of the editors of the National Intelligencer in 
which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceeding. 
He or the gov'n "» 

Here, either from weakness, or perhaps with a sudden 
alarm, the diary abruptly breaks. And there is but one 
more entry, dated "Friday 21." 

On the night of the assassination, shortly before ten 
o'clock, William Williams, a captain of police cavalry in 
Washington, passed Ford's Theatre, and seeing John 
Booth on the street in front of the theatre asked him to 
take a drink. John declined, pleading some good- 
natured excuse, and Captain Williams went on toward 
the Avenue and entered Doc Claggett's restaurant at the 

1 Suppressed by the War Office for two years, and finally introduced in evidence, 
on the demand of the defence, at the trial of John Surratt in 1867. (S. T. vol. i, p 310) 
This copy was made especially for this book, direct from the original in the office of the 
Judge-Advocatc-General, War Office, Washington, D. C. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 133 

corner of Tenth Street and the Avenue. He was there, 
less than half an hour later, when some one rushed in 
and said the President had been shot at Ford's. Captain 
"Williams ran to the theatre, and there some one in autho- 
rity told him to bring his cavalry quickly to the scene. 
This he did, and spent the night guarding the Kirkwood 
House where Johnson lay, Early on Saturday morning, 
Provost-Marshal O'Beirne went to the hotel with a 
cavalry squad under Lieutenant Alexander Lovett, and 
ordered Williams to join them in the hunt for the assassin. 1 
In a few minutes the pursuers were clattering down the 
Avenue toward the Capitol, on their way to the Navy 
Yard bridge. A little later, Major A. C. Richards, 
Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, crossed the 
bridge with his mounted squad. All day Saturday, 
indeed, pursuers poured into Maryland, until by nightfall 
there were nearly two thousand of them galloping madly 
around, doing doubtless rather more harm than good. 

On Tuesday, a detective party under the command of 
Major James R. O'Beirne started down the river by 
steamer, arriving at Port Tobacco that night. Here 
there was a great meeting of the searching squads. Major 
Waite, of the 8th Illinois Cavalry, was there when the 
detectives got there; he had been as far south as Leonards- 

1 Buckingham, pp. 61-63. 



134 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

town and had returned because he could get no trace of 
the fugitives down that way. So it was determined to 
sweep the swamps around Port Tobacco and also to 
send a posse to the river, four miles away. Accordingly, 
fourteen hundred cavalrymen there collected were ordered 
to dismount and search the swamps. These men were: 
700 men of the 8th Illinois, 600 men of the 22nd Coloured 
Troops, and 100 men of the 16th New York Cavalry. 
But no trace of the assassin could be found, although 
the whole searching party doubtless passed him once, 
and small detachments of it probably repassed him many 
times. 

On Wednesday, at the bar of Brawner's Hotel in Port 
Tobacco, Captain Williams stood next to a lean, inscru- 
table man who could, if he would, Williams felt, tell 
something about the man they sought. So Williams 
announced that he would give $300,000 for information 
leading to the capture of Booth — keenly eyeing the lean 
man as he said it. But the lean man's face never changed 
its blank expression; his name was Thomas A. Jones. 1 

On Friday, Jones, was at Allen's Fresh, and heard the 
discouraged officers of the searching squad order their 
men down into St. Mary's County, where they then 
began to believe the assassin must be. Mounting his 



1 Buckingham, pp. 63, 64. 




X 

> 



o 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 135 

horse, Jones made good time to the pine thicket, where 
he announced that the crossing of the river might be 
attempted that night. 

No move could be made until after dark, and it was 
doubtless while waiting for this cover of the moonless 
night that Booth made the second and last entry in his 
diary. From the first sentence of this it would seem that 
on Thursday night Booth and Herold must have made 
a desperate and unadvised attempt to get away. The 
entry reads: 

Friday, 21. — After being hunted like a dog through 
swamps and woods, and last night being chased by gun- 
boats till I was forced to return, w 7 et, cold, and starving, 
with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. 
And w T hy ? For doing what Brutus was honoured for — 
what made William Tell a hero; and yet I, for striking 
down an even greater tyrant than they ever knew, am 
looked upon as a common cutthroat. My act was purer 
than either of theirs. One hoped to be great himself; 
the other had not only his country's, but his own, wrongs 
to avenge. I hoped for no gain ; I knew no private wrong. 
I struck for my country, and her alone. A people ground 
beneath this tyranny prayed for this end, and yet now 
see the cold hands they extend to me! God cannot 
pardon me if I have done wrong; yet I cannot see any 
wrong, except in serving a degenerate people. The 
little, the very little, I left behind to clear my name, the 
Government will not allow to be printed. So ends all! 
For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet 
and holy — to-night misfortune upon my family, and 



136 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

am sure there is no pardon for me in the heavens, since 
man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has 
been done (except what I did myself), and it fills me with 
horror. God, try and forgive me and bless my mother. 
To-night I will once more try the river, with the intention 
to cross; though I have a greater desire and almost a mind 
to return to Washington, and in a measure clear my name, 
which I feel I can do. 

I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my 
God, but not to man. I think I have done well, though 
I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, 
if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have 
made me great, though I did desire no greatness. To- 
night I try once more to escape these bloodhounds. Who, 
who, can read his fate ? God's will be done. I have 
too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh! may He 
spare me that, and let me die bravely. I bless the entire 
world. I have never hated nor wronged any one. This 
last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so, and it is 
with Him to damn or bless me. And for this brave boy, 
Herold, here with me, who often prays (yes, before and 
since) with a true and sincere heart, was it a crime in 
him? If so, why can he pray the same? I do not wish 
to shed a drop of blood, but I must fight the course. 
'T is all that 's left me. 

When the darkness permitted, Jones went to the 
thicket and with Herold's help lifted Booth to his 
(Jones's) horse. Then, Herold leading the horse and 
Jones walking a little in advance to show the way and 
to scout, they proceeded to Huckleberry Farm, which 
was about three-quarters of a mile from the Potomac. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 137 

Here Jones hid his men in the orchard while he went in 
to get them some food. Booth begged piteously, with 
tears in his eyes, to be taken into the house for a cup of 
hot coffee, but Jones knew the risk of being seen by some 
of the negroes about the place was too great, and refused. 

From Huckleberry Farm to the river the road is a 
winding one, through woods much of the way, and Jones 
and Herold made but slow progress over it with Booth 
on Jones's horse. At the water's edge was a flat-bot- 
tomed boat in which Henry Woodland, a faithful coloured 
man belonging to Jones, had been fishing for shad that 
day. Jones had told him where to leave the boat, and 
here he found it when he and the fugitives reached the 
river. He and Herold lifted Booth into the stern of the 
boat. Booth paid him all he would take ($17), Herold 
took up the oars, and just before he pushed them off 
Jones lighted a candle for a moment and showed Booth 
how to steer to get into Machodoc Creek. He gave him, 
also, directions to a Mrs. Quesenberry's who, Jones 
thought, would harbour them. Booth thanked Jones 
profusely as he shoved their little boat out into the rough, 
rain-swept river — and in a moment more he and the boy 
Davy were alone in the all-enveloping blackness. 1 

"The night was ink-black," said Jones, describing it 

'Buckingham, p. 67. 



138 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

long afterward, "and I could not see either of the men, 
but had to feel for them; and as I was in the act of pushing 
the boat off Booth said, in a voice choked with emotion: 
'God bless you, my dear friend, for all you have done 
for me. Good-bye, good-bye!' I pushed the boat off, 
and it glided out in the darkness. I could see nothing, 
and the only sound was the swish of the waves made by 
the little boat. Never in all my life did my heart go out 
in more pity and sympathy for my fellow-man than that 
night. I stood on the shore and listened till the sound 
of the oars died away in the distance, then climbed the 
hill and took my way home, and my sleep was more 
quiet, and peaceful than it had been for some time." 1 

It was more quiet and peaceful than it would have been 
could he have known what was happening to his late 
charges. After long, hard rowing, they found themselves 
twelve miles out of their way and obliged to retrace their 
course, which they did not dare to do then, lest daylight 
find them abroad. So they hid themselves in this strange 
place, not knowing what manner of place it was, and 
early in the morning Davy ventured cautiously out of 
hiding and made his way to the house of Colonel J. J. 
Hughes, where he begged food and learned how best to 
make their way thence to Machodoc Creek. 

1 Oldroyd, p. no. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 139 

All day Saturday they lay concealed beside Avon Creek, 
and in the darkness pushed their boat out again into the 
Potomac and made for the Virginia shore. Machodoc 
Creek, when they reached it, had so many small vessels 
in it that they would not venture in, but tried Gambo 
Creek, a mile distant. Here Herold tied their boat, 
helped Booth out, and settled him under a black-walnut 
tree while he sought Mrs. Quesenberry's cottage to ask 
for food and directions. He returned, presently, with 
Thomas H. Harbin, a brother-in-law of Jones, who lived 
in the neighbourhood. Harbin guided them farther up 
Gambo Creek and to the cabin of a man named Bryan, who 
gave them refuge from early Sunday morning until some 
time Sunday afternoon, when he conveyed them through 
the woods to the summer home of a Dr. Richard Stuart, 
from whom, on account of his well-known ardour for the 
Southern cause, Booth hoped to receive a welcome. 

But Dr. Stuart was of no mind to put himself in jeopardy 
with the Government now that the war was over, and he 
refused to harbour the fugitives. He gave them some 
food (most of the food received must have been con- 
sumed by Davy, for whenever Booth was observed it 
was noted that he left everything untouched) and 
directed them to the cabin of a negro on his place, one 
William Lucas. 



140 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Booth, keenly feeling this rebuff, wrote a note (probably 
in Lucas's cabin) and sent it back to the doctor. It read : 

Forgive me, but I have some little pride. I cannot 
blame you for want of hospitality; you know your own 
affairs. I was sick, tired, with a broken leg, and in need 
of medical assistance. I would not have turned a dog 
away from my door in such a plight. However, you were 
kind enough to give us something to eat, for which I not 
only thank you; not for the rebuke and manner in which 
to [piece torn out]. It is not the substance, but the way 
in which kindness is extended, that makes one happy in 
the acceptance thereof. The sauce to meat is ceremony, 
meeting were bare without it. Be kind enough to accept 
the enclosed five dollars, although hard to spare, for what 
we have had. 1 

Lucas kept the men Sunday night, and early on Monday 
morning took them in a waggon to Port Conway on the 
Rappahannock, where they arrived at 9.30. William 
Rollins, the ferryman plying between Port Conway and 
Port Royal on the opposite side of the river, was sitting at 
the door of his little house mending his nets when Herold 
asked for water for himself and his lame "brother" who 
was across the street. He asked, too, about getting across 
the river, and was told he would have to wait a little while 
until the tide rose. 

While they were waiting, three Confederate officers rode 
up to the ferry. They were Captain William M. Jett, 

1 S. T. vol. i, p. 402. 







H rt O 



b- u 



h 2 

Z K 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 141 

Lieutenant A. R. Bainbridge, and Lieutenant Ruggles, 
and when it became evident that they, too, were going to 
wait for the ferry, Herold got out of Lucas's waggon and 
came toward them, inquiring of them to what command 
they belonged. Ruggles answered : " Mosby's command." 
\Yhereupon Herold ventured: "If I am not inquisitive, 
can I ask you where you are going ? " Jett told him that 
was a secret. Presently Booth got out of the waggon and on 
his rude, improvised crutches approached the officers, to 
whom he said he was a member of the corps of A. P. Hill, 
the gallant commander whose death in the Appomattox 
campaign had brought such sorrow to the Confederacy. 

Herold then spoke up and said their name was Boyd, 
that his "brother" had been wounded in the fighting 
below Petersburg, and that they wanted to get "out of the 
lines." He turned to Jett — they were all sitting down, 
now, in front of Rollins's house — touched him on the 
shoulder and, saying he wanted to speak to him, led him 
over to the wharf where he further entreated Jett to take 
his "brother" and him south. To this pleading Jett 
answered: "I cannot go with any man that I don't know 
anything about." And Herold, after a moment's thought, 
whispered in great agitation: "We are the assassinators of 
the President." Jett was confounded beyond the power 
of reply. He saw Ruggles at the river watering his horse 



142 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

and called him to the wharf. There was a consultation in 
which Booth presently joined, hobbling down from the 
house; and the upshot of it was that when the tide rose 
they crossed together, Booth riding Ruggles's horse. 

Arrived on the Port Royal side, Jett went to the house of 
a lady he knew and asked her if she would entertain two 
Confederate soldiers for two or three days. At first she 
said she would, then she refused. So the five men went 
along the road toward Bowling Green, and about three 
miles on the way came to the comfortable farmhouse of a 
Mr. Garrett who consented, on solicitation, to shelter 
a wounded Confederate for a day or two. 

It was about three o'clock Monday afternoon when Jett 
— although he did not know Mr. Garrett — undertook 
the introduction to him of "John William Boyd," and 
asked Mr. Garrett to care for "Boyd" until Wednesday 
morning, at which time his companions would call for him. 
Thereupon the four others rode off, Herold stopping for 
that night with Ruggles at the house of a Mrs. Clark in 
the neighbourhood of Bowling Green. Jett had a sweet- 
heart in the latter village and she was the occasion of his 
presence in the vicinity; her father kept the hotel, and 
thither Jett made haste as soon as he had safely bestowed 
Booth. 1 



1 C. T. p. oo, Captain William M. Jett; Century Magazine for January, 1890, pp. 
443 et seq : "The Pursuit and Death of Booth," by Bainbridge, Jett, and Ruggles. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 143 

At ten o'clock Monday morning, April 24th, S. H. 
Beckwith, General Grant's cipher operator, who had on 
the Saturday previous (April 22d) been ordered to the 
lower Potomac to establish communication between the 
various searching parties, wired as follows from Port 
Tobacco : 

Major Eckert: Have just met Major O'Beirne, whose 
force has arrested Dr. Mudd and Thompson. Mudd set 
Booth's left leg (fractured), furnished crutches, and helped 
him and Herold off. They have been tracked as far as 
the swamp near Bryan town. 1 

Meantime, on Saturday night, hard on the trail of the 
fugitives, O'Beirne and his detectives had crossed the 
Potomac, and although most of the party were exhausted 
by that time and had to stay behind on the Virginia shore, 
the major and one man pushed on all night, going as far 
as King George, where they thought they found evidence 
that the men they sought were trying to make Port Royal. 
On Sunday they returned to Chapel Point, passing their 
quarry on the way, and O'Beirne telegraphed Washington 
for permission to pursue the chase to Port Royal. This 
was refused, and he was ordered home. 2 



1 " Lincoln in the Telegraph Office," p. 373. 

2 Baker, p. 494, describes how O'Beirne "asked permission to pursue, promising fo 
catch the assassins before they reached Port Royal. This the department refused, 
and O'Beirne returned to Washington, cheerful and contented." We are glad to have 
Baker's assurance about the cheer and content, but O'Beirne's would be more convincing. 



144 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

There was a large reward for the capture of Booth and 
Hero Id, and every one in the country, seemingly, was anxi- 
ous to swear something or do something to get a portion of 
it. O'Beirne was undoubtedly entitled to a lion's share. 
But up in Washington there was Baker — Lafayette C. — 
chief of the Secret Service. Baker was a pious old fraud 
who left a most malodorous reputation in Washington, 
where he was tried for blackmail and technically acquitted, 
although he was very generally believed to be one of the 
worst leeches in the Government employ. He stood well 
with Stanton, however, and on Monday the 24th, when 
Beckwith's cipher message was received at the War 
Office, Stanton ordered O'Beirne home and gave the 
situation into Baker's hands. 

Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty and twenty-six picked 
men of the 16th New York Cavalry were ordered to report 
to Baker, which they did about two o'clock Monday after- 
noon. Baker put these men in charge of Colonel Everton 
J. Conger and Lieutenant Luther B. Baker, both of his 
staff and the latter a cousin of the Secret Service chief. 
And about four o'clock — shortly after Booth had been 
taken into the Garrett home — these twenty-nine pursuers 
embarked on the steamer John S. Ide and sailed down to 
Belle Plain, the nearest landing to Fredericksburg, arriving 
at ten o'clock. From Belle Plain they galloped across 




u 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 145 

country, riding all night and all day Tuesday. At three 
o'clock Tuesday afternoon they arrived at the Port Conway 
ferry, found Rollins, showed him photographs of Booth 
and Herold, and learned from him that the men wanted 
had been ferried across the Rappahannock by him just 
about twenty-four hours before. Rollins said they had 
started for Bowling Green, in company with three Con- 
federate officers. He was arrested and taken as guide, the 
river was ferried again, and about sundown the posse 
galloped past Garrett's, where Booth and the family 
were seated on the porch. 1 Herold was there, too. He 
had come to the house during the afternoon with Jett and 
Bainbridge, who left him there and rode off. Later they 
came riding back and gave Booth the alarm, telling him 
of the presence of Federal troops at the ferry. When 
Booth saw the troops go by, he and Herold retired pre- 
cipitately to a thicket behind the barn, not venturing 
thence until summoned to supper. Asked why they 
feared the Federal troops now that the war was over, 
Booth said they had been " in a little brush over in Mary- 
land" and thought best to lie low for a few days. 

The Garretts suspected their guest. He had offered to 
buy the horse of Jack Garrett for $150, but young Garrett 
refused because the horse was one he had ridden through 

1 C T. pp. 91 , 95, Everton J. Conger, Edward Doherty. 



146 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

the late campaigns of Lee's army and was given him by 
the magnanimous terms of Grant's peace compact at 
Appomattox. Booth then offered Garrett ten dollars to 
take him the next morning to Guinea Station, eighteen 
miles away. To this Garrett agreed, and Booth paid the 
money then and there. 

When bedtime came, Booth manifested strong reluctance 
to go upstairs, and on insisting that he would rather sleep 
anywhere else, even in a barn, was conducted to a large 
tobacco-house in which was stored a lot of valuable old 
furniture belonging to wealthy families of Port Royal who 
hoped thus to preserve their heirlooms from destruction at 
the hands of the Federal soldiers. 

Jack Garrett believed this sleeping in the barn was a 
ruse; that the strange men would get up in the night and 
steal their horses. So he locked them into the tobacco- 
house and gave the key to a Miss Holloway who boarded 
with the Garretts. And he and his brother went to a shed 
near the tobacco-house, whence they could keep watch of 
their suspicious visitors. 1 

It was after eleven o'clock that night when the soldiers 
Booth had seen passing Garrett's before sundown reached 
Bowling Green, surrounded the little tavern, and arrested 
Jett, who was in bed. Conger demanded to know where 

1 Oldroyd, pp. 298-299. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 147 

the two men Jett had crossed the ferry with were now, and 
Jett, very much frightened, told Conger where they were 
and offered to go as guide and show the way. 

At two in the morning the squad of thirty surrounded 
Garrett's farmhouse and Lieutenant Baker rapped loudly 
at the kitchen door. Presently the elder Garrett came to 
the door in his nightclothes, and was roughly seized by 
Baker, who clutched the old man's throat with one hand 
and with the other held a pistol to his head. When Mr. 
Garrett could speak, he said the men were gone. But 
just then Jack Garrett appeared from his shed, and 
urged upon his father, whom Conger was threatening to 
hang, the need of telling the truth in the matter. A guard 
was left to watch the father, and the rest of the posse, led by 
Jack Garrett, approached the tobacco-house. The 
soldiers were stationed around the building — which was 
only about 100 feet from the residence — at a distance 
of ten yards, with four of them at the padlocked door. 
The key was fetched from the house, and while they were 
waiting for it a rustling noise could be heard within the 
tobacco-house. 

Baker spoke to the men inside saying he would send in 
to demand their surrender one of the young Garretts. 
To this youth he ordered them to deliver their arms, after 
which they were to come out and give themselves up. 



148 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Accordingly, the trembling Garrett boy was sent within, 
and soon returned, reporting that Booth had cursed him 
for a betrayer and "reached down into the hay behind 
him" as if for a weapon — whereupon Garrett waited not 
on the order of his going, but went at once. 

Then Baker called in to them that if they did not come 
out in five minutes he would fire the tobacco-house. To 
which Booth replied in a ringing voice: "Who are you; 
what do you want; whom do you want?" 

"We want you," said Baker, "and we know who you 
are; give up your arms and come out." 

"Let us have a little time to consider," urged Booth; 
and this was granted. 

Ten minutes went by in hushed stillness, awaiting the 
least sound from within — fifteen minutes. In the yard 
the thirty pursuers, including Captain William Jett, who 
must have hated himself for his betrayal of a wounded 
man; hovering anxiously among them, the Garrett boys, 
indignant at the brutal treatment of their father, worried 
about the valuables in the tobacco-house,deeply concerned 
about the shock to their mother and the fright of their 
little sister; on the fringes of the little crowd, wide-eyed, 
agitated blacks, shivering with terror and yet appreciative 
of the excitement; on the pillared gallery of the home-like 
two-storied white house a little group of horror-stricken 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 149 

women, including Mrs. Garrett and Miss Holloway, her 
boarder. And from within the tobacco-house not a sound. 
At length, the ringing voice again: 

"Who are you and what do you want?" 

And from Baker the reply: "We want you; we want to 
take you prisoners." 

"Captain," said the clear voice, every tone of which 
was distinguishable on the gallery, a hundred feet away, 
"I know you to be a brave man, and I believe you to be 
honourable. I am a cripple; I have got but one leg. If 
you will withdraw your men in line one hundred yards from 
the door I will come out and fight you." 

Baker replied that he had come not to fight but to cap- 
ture; to which Booth said: " If you will take your men fifty 
yards from the door, I '11 come out and fight you. Give 
me a chance for my life!" 

Later, he offered to fight all the men singly, and when 
Baker again refused, the word came back: "Well, my 
brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me." 

Then Conger directed the Garrett boys to pile brush 
against the corners of the tobacco-house, and passed in and 
out among his men giving orders for the capture when the 
flames should force Booth and Herold out; above all, 
Booth must be taken alive, if possible. 

Some one close to the tobacco-house heard Booth say 



150 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

to his companion: "You damned coward, will you leave 
me now? Go! Go! I would not have you stay with me." 

Booth then came to the door and announced: "There 's 
a man in here who wants to come out." 

"Very well," said Baker, "let him hand his arms out 
and come." 

Thereupon Herold came to the door and said: "Let 
me out." 

"Hand out your arms," ordered Baker, "you carried 
a carbine and you must hand it out." 

"The arms are mine," called Booth, "and I have got 
them. Upon the word and honour of a gentleman, this 
man has none. And I declare before my Maker that he 
is innocent of any crime whatever." 

Herold was then ordered to put out his hands, they were 
manacled, and he was quickly dragged out, the door 
slammed behind him, and the easy prisoner hurried to a 
remote corner of the yard with a couple of cavalrymen to 
guard him. 

Immediately Herold was secured, Conger went around 
to a corner of the tobacco-house, pulled a wisp of hay 
through a crack, set fire to it, and stuck it back. The 
hay was very dry and blazed almost instantly. Booth 
turned, when he heard it crackling, and seemed to be 
looking to see if he could put it out. Then, as if convinced 




Collection of Mr. Robert Coster. 

The Capture and Death of Booth 

Booth and Herold were discovered hiding in the tobacco-house of Mr. 
Garrett, on the road to Bowling Green. The building was set 
afire to compel Booth to surrender, as it was intended to take him 
alive. 




Collection of Mr. Robert Coster. 



Booth's Escape 

Booth had a horse waiting for him, near the theatre, which he mounted 
and made his escape from the scene of his crime. lie urns* have 
suffered keenly, as he had broken a bone in his leg in his leap from 
the box to the sta> r c. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 151 

that he could not,, he started toward the door. At that 
moment a shot rang out. Boston Corbett, a trooper of 
the 16th New York, had lost his head, disobeyed orders, 
and fired through a crack with deadly aim. 1 

"He has shot himself!" was the instant thought of 
every one. Conger rushed into the barn and found 
Baker already there and raising Booth up. They dis- 
covered a wound in the neck, close to the back of the 
head, from which the blood was pouring freely. 

Out on to the grass beneath the locust trees they 
dragged him, and there they left him for dead while they 
went back to see if the fire could be put out. It could not, 
and Conger left it and returned to Booth, whose eyes 
and lips were moving as if he wanted to speak. He was 
carried to the gallery, Miss Holloway fetched a pillow 
for his head, and dipped a rag in brandy and water to 
moisten his lips. 

Presently he was able to articulate, and Conger bent 
over him to hear what he might say. "Tell mother — 
I die — for my — country," he gasped. "I did — what 
I thought — was — best." 



1 C. T. pp. p4, 95, Boston Corbett. Corbett was a religious fanatic. According to 
Harper's Weekly for May 13, 1865, "he was a constant attendant of the Fulton Street 
Meeting, New York, and greatly annoyed it by what was considered his fanaticism." 
In 1887 Corbett was committed to an asylum for the insane in Kansas, from which he 
escaped. In 1001, according to Oldroyd (pp. 100, iot), he had for four years been a 
travelling salesman for a Topeka patent medicine concern, and "covered" Texas and 
Oklahoma, having his headquarters at Enid, Okla. 



152 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Conger repeated it after him and asked him if he had 
got it right, and Booth whispered "Yes." He motioned 
to Conger to put his hand on his throat, as if to help him 
cough, which Conger did, but Booth was unable to 
cough. Conger told him to open his mouth, and Booth, 
with difficulty, did; Conger looked in and said: "There 
is no blood in your throat." 

Conger then searched the dying man's pockets and 
took all they contained — the diary, a knife, a pipe, a 
little file, a pocket-compass smeared with candle-drip- 
pings, the bill of exchange bought in Montreal in October, 
etc. Booth whispered pleadingly, "Kill me, kill me." 

"We don't want to kill you," Conger assured him, 
"we want you to get well." 

Conger then left, telling Baker if Booth was not dead 
in an hour "to send over to Belle Plain for a surgeon 
from one of the gunships; if he died, to get the best 
conveyance he could and bring him on." Conger was 
in mad haste to get to Stanton and tell him that $75,000 
had been earned. He reached Washington at 5 p. m., 
and with Chief Baker went at once to Stanton to tell him 
the news. They thought to excite the grim war minister 
for once, but they were mistaken, he took the announce- 
ment quite stolidly. 1 

l Q, T. pp. 91-93, Conger. 




Collection of Mr. Robert Coster. 



Sergeant Boston Corbett, 16th N. Y. Cavalry 
AYho fired the shot that killed John Wilkes Booth. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 153 

Corbett fired about 3.15 a.m. that Wednesday, the 
twenty-sixth of April. Booth lingered until half-past 
five; conscious to the last he must have been, the doctors 
who knew the nature of the wound said afterward, and 
suffering the most excruciating agony a human being 
can know. 

Toward the end, as the dawn was breaking into bril- 
liant day, he indicated by a look, a feeble motion, that 
he wanted his paralyzed arms raised so he could see his 
hands. This was done, and he said, very faintly, as he 
looked at them: "Useless — useless!"' Those were his 
last words. Whether he bemoaned the uselessness of 
his hands to fight for him, or the uselessness of their mad 
crime, God only knows. But he could not more accu- 
rately have epitomized his insane deed. Never — 
except Once — was vengeance so misdirected. Never 
was sacrifice of a brilliant young life so worse than "use- 
less." 

Five minutes after Booth died a country doctor 
arrived — in time to pronounce him dead. Very shortly 
thereafter the body was sewed up in an army blanket, 
strapped to a board, and put in the dilapidated old cart 
which a coloured man of the neighbourhood had used as an 
ambulance after the many bloody battles fought there- 

1 Baker, p. 604; "The Assassin's Death" by George Alfred Townsend (Dick and 
Fitzgerald, New York, 1S05), P- 37- 



154 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

abouts. This decrepit vehicle, with its ghastly freight, 
was ferried across the Rappahannock at Port Royal and 
headed for Belle Plain where the Ide lay; Herold, man- 
acled, rode behind his comrade's body. 

About nine miles from Port Conway the old waggon 
broke, and was abandoned by the roadside; a new con- 
veyance was procured, Belle Plain was reached, and 
the Ide got under way for Alexandria, where it arrived at 
twenty minutes to eleven that night. 1 

A tug was there, by Stanton's orders, to meet the Ide; 
on it were Conger and his chief, and to it were trans- 
ferred the body of Booth and the person of Herold. At 
a quarter to two in the morning the tug came alongside 
the monitor Montauk, anchored off the Navy Yard; 
and Herold was put in double irons and placed in the 
hold, while the body of Booth was, on Baker's orders, 
kept on deck under a guard. The body was noted by 
the Commandant of the Navy Yard, when he saw it 
in the morning, to be changing rapidly, and he so apprised 
Secretary of the Navy Welles. 

Secretary Welles accordingly issued an order per- 
mitting the following persons to board the Montauk and 

1 Baker, pp. 505, 506. Baker copied extensively from the writings of Townsend, 
who as " Gath" was the newspaper correspondent most widely read of any who wrote 
of events connected with the assassination. Townsend was connected with the Xew 
York World, and as he seems to have taken stock in Baker (which few persons did) 
Baker's book is copiously drawn from Townsend's writings. Oldroyd also quotes 
extensively from Townsend. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 155 

see the body: Surgeon-General Barnes and his assistant, 
Judge-Advocate-General Holt and his assistant, Hon. 
John A. Bingham, Major Eckert and William Moore, 
of the War Department, the two Bakers and Conger, 
Gardner, the official photographer and his assistant, 
O'Sullivan, Dr. May, a Washington physician who two 
years before had removed a tumour from Booth's neck, 
and others. 1 One of Baker's men took on board a girl 
who had known Booth, and she cut a lock of hair from 
the dead man's head, but Baker, coming upon her, saw 
her, and took the hair away. 2 

"Immediately after the Surgeon-General has made 
his autopsy," Commandant Montgomery's orders read, 
"you will have the body placed in a strong box and 
deliver it to Colonel Baker, the box being carefully 
sealed." Thereupon the commandant gave orders 
to have the box made, and there was a scramble among 
the Navy Yard workmen for the privilege of driving a 
nail in the coffin of the President's murderer. 3 

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when General 
Barnes and his assistant cut from Booth's neck a small 
section — two spools — of the spine, through which 



1 James Croggon in the Washington Star, January 5, 1907. 

2 Baker, pp. 507, 508. 

3 Told the present writer by Captain Beacham. an old employee of the Arsenal; also 
see Croggon in Star as above. 



156 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Corbett's ball had passed 1 and — the body having been 
fully identified, photographed, and officially attested 
dead — left the ironclad, together with most of those 
who had attended the autopsy. 

At a quarter to three, without waiting for leave or 
licence, without stopping for the strong box or the seal, 
Colonel Baker lowered the limp body into a small row- 
boat and took it away, leaving the officers at the Navy 
Yard astonished at its sudden disappearance. 

The boat was rowed down the Eastern branch and up 
the main stream of the Potomac, which bounds the city 
on the south. At the foot of Four-and-a-Half Street, on 
the river, was the Arsenal inclosure, with an old-fashioned 
penitentiary building, then used as an ordnance store- 
house, midway of the grounds. The party in the small 
boat steered for the Arsenal wharf and there, about four 
o'clock, the body of Booth was landed and laid on the 
wharf in charge of a sentry. It lay there until after 
nightfall, during which time Baker and Major Eckert, 
representing Stanton's office, conferred with Major Ben- 
ton, Commandant of the Arsenal, about its disposition. 

During the night it was carried into one of the cellar 

1 This section of spinal column, and the bit of spinal cord, are now in the National 
Medical Museum, Washington. They are not marked with Booth's name, but were 
shown to the present writer by Dr. Lamb, of the museum. Dr. Lamb also answered 
the question of the skeleton in the Museum cellar, sometimes said to be that of Booth; 
it is Guiteau's. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 157 

storerooms of the old penitentiary, some bricks were 
removed from the floor, a grave was dug, the body was 
put in a gun box and covered with a blanket, the earth 
and then the bricks were hastily replaced, and the room 
was locked, the key being taken to Stanton by Major 
Eckert. That was where John Booth lay while rumours 
of his incineration, his burial at sea, his dismemberment, 
filled the air. 1 

A little after one o'clock on the morning of April loth, 
Lieutenant John F. Toffey, going to the Lincoln Hos- 
pital where he was on duty, saw a dark-bay horse with 
saddle and bridle on, standing at Lincoln Branch Bar- 
racks, about three-quarters of a mile east of the Capitol 
and a mile west of the Navy Yard bridge. The sweat 
was pouring off the horse and had made a puddle on the 
ground; a sentinel at the hospital had stopped him, and 
when Lieutenant Toffey came he took the horse down 
to the Old Capitol Prison and thence to General Augur's 
headquarters where the animal was found to be blind of 
one eye.' 

1 Baker, p. 703; Croggon in the Washington Star, April 28, 1865, also January 5, 
1907. Croggon's veracious account of Booth's burial was almost lost sight of in the 
wild stories that filled the public prints. Frank Leslie's Weekly for May 20, 186s. con- 
tained a full-page picture of the sinking of Booth's body in mid-Potomac at night, accom- 
panied by the following note: 

"The sketch below was furnished by one of the two officers employed in the duty 
of sinking the body of Booth in the middle of the Potomac Although not authorized 
to divulge his name, I am able to vouch for the truth of the representation. F. Leslie." 

2 C. T. pp. 159-160, John F. Toffey 



158 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

It was the horse John Booth had bought in November, 
of George Gardiner, Dr. Mudd's neighbour. It had carried 
Lewis Payne to Secretary Seward's house on the night 
of the 14th, a little before ten o'clock; had ridden off at 
a mad gallop with him up Vermont Avenue and thence, 
by some route we cannot trace, toward the Navy Yard 
bridge. Somewhere or other the horse threw its rider 
and went galloping on until stopped by the hospital 
guard. 

Sunday afternoon, in a piece of woods between Fort 
Bunker Hill and Fort Saratoga, three miles from the 
Eastern Branch of the Potomac, Thomas Price picked 
up Payne's coat. 1 Where the boy was between midnight 
or earlier on Friday and midnight on the Monday follow- 
ing, we do not know, but no one seems to have seen him 
in that time. He does not seem to have made any 
effort to escape, nor could it be learned that he had 
applied to any one for food. He was probably lying 
in the bushes, somewhere within a very few miles of the 
scene of his crime. And after nightfall on Monday he 
got up and wandered back into Washington. 

About three o'clock Saturday morning, while the 
President lay dying, detectives James DeWitt, John 
Clarvoe, and others, pulled violently at the door-bell of 



l C. T. p. 158, Thomas Price. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 159 

Mrs. Surratt's house, and after a brief wait on the steps 
the door was opened by Louis Weichmann, to whom the 
detectives said they had come to search the house for 
John Wilkes Booth and John H. Surratt. 1 

Weichmann said he didn't inquire why they were 
searching until they reached his room, when they told 
him that Booth had murdered the President and Surratt 
the Secretary of State; to which Weichmann replied that 
the latter, at least, must be a mistake, for Surratt was in 
Canada, and had been for ten days. He then went 
downstairs with the detectives, he said, and met Mrs. 
Surratt coming out of her room, which was the back 
parlour. Weichmann told her about Booth, and said she 
exclaimed: "My God, Mr. Weichmann! you don't tell 
me so." She told the detectives her son was in Canada, 
whence she had received a letter from him only the day 
before. On Weichmann's promise to report at detective 
headquarters at eight o'clock, the detectives left. 

Immediately after breakfast Weichmann went to 
police headquarters on Tenth Street near E, only a 
stone's throw from Ford's Theatre. 2 He did not again 
return to the Surratt house, except to get his personal 
belongings. Later in the day he went over into Mary- 
land with the detectives, and was close on the trail of the 

1 C. T. p. 116, Weichmann; p. 140, Holohan, James McDevitt. 

2 C T. p. 119, Weichmann. 



160 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

fugitives without knowing it. Sunday he accompanied 
the detectives to Baltimore, returning that night. While 
they were in Baltimore, the War Department issued an 
order for them to go to Montreal to see if they could 
find Surratt. It was April 29th when they returned, 
Weichmann going to a boarding-house close by the War 
Office which kept in constant communication with him. 
Sunday morning, the thirtieth of April, Weichmann was 
taken to see Stanton, who subjected him to a cross- 
questioning lasting two hours, at the conclusion of which 
Weichmann was told he would have to be held in 
custody. He was turned over to Baker, who took him 
to Carroll Prison. On May 13th he took the stand 
at the trial and swore away the life of Mary E. Surratt. 1 
Weichmann's testimony at police headquarters on 
Saturday morning must not immediately have impli- 
cated Mrs. Surratt, for no attempt to arrest her was made 
until midnight on Monday. If what he said of her was 
true, he must have managed to guard it against the 
"sweating" of Major Richards, Superintendent of 
Police; if it was concocted, he evidently did not feel the 
pressure which made a false witness of him until after- 
ward. If he did not see Stanton until April 30th, he quite 
certainly saw on April 17th some one representing 



» S. T. vol. i, pp. 395-399- 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 161 

Stanton's office, and on that night the War Department, 
not the city police, arrested Mrs. Surratt. 

It was 11.20 that Monday night when Colonel Olcott, 
special commissioner of the War Department, ordered 
R. G. Morgan of the department to go to Mrs. Surratt's 
house and superintend the seizing of papers and the 
arrest of the household. He arrived there about half-past 
eleven, and found Major W. H. Smith, Lieutenant John 
W. Dempsey, Captain W. M. Wermerskirch, and others, 
already there; they had arrived about ten minutes before. 

When Major Smith rang the bell, Mrs. Surratt came 
to the parlour window and asked: "Is that you, Mr. 
Kirby?" She was told it was not Mr. Kirby, and or- 
dered to open the door, which she did. Asked if she 
were the mother of John H. Surratt, Jr., she said "I 
am." Whereupon Major Smith said: "I come to arrest 
you and all in your house, and take you for examination 
to General Augur's headquarters. 1 

Incriminating circumstance was made of her failure 
to ask the reason for her arrest, but as she knew her son 
was suspected of the attempt to murder Secretary Seward, 
and that her household was under suspicion on account 
of Booth's visits there, it hardly seems very damning 
that the frightened woman asked no questions. 



1 C. T. pp. 121, 124, Smith, Morgan, Wermerskirch, Dempsey. 



162 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

It was a household of women solely, including Miss 
Anna Surratt, Miss Olivia Jenkins — Mrs. Surratt's 
sister, who had been visiting her for some time — and 
Miss Honora Fitzpatrick, a boarder. The Holohan 
family had taken fright at the detectives' appearance 
Saturday morning, and had moved to other quarters on 
Sunday. 

As soon as Morgan arrived he sent out for a carriage 
to take the four agitated women to General Augur's 
headquarters, and while they were waiting for this there 
came a knock and a ring at the door. Morgan and 
Wermerskirch opened the door, and Lewis Payne stepped 
into the hall. He was grimed and fouled from his three 
days and three nights in hiding — unshaven and wild- 
eyed, and mud to his knees. He had been hatless since 
he left Seward's house, and over his matted hair had 
drawn a piece of gray knitted wool evidently torn 
from a sleeve of his shirt or a leg of his under-drawers. 
On his shoulder he carried a pick. 

When he saw the officers Payne said quickly: "I guess 
I am mistaken." Asked whom he wished to see, he 
said Mrs. Surratt, and was told he was in the right place 
and bidden to walk in. Morgan asked him what he 
came there at that time of night for, and he said Mrs. 
Surratt had sent for him to dig a gutter. He was re- 




Davey Herold 



Geonre A. Atzerodt 







Lewis Payne Mrs. Mary E. Surratt 

The Four Conspirators Who Were Hanged 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 163 

minded that this was a strange hour to come to work, 
and he said he had not come to work, only to inquire 
at what hour he would be wanted in the morning. Mor- 
gan asked him a number of questions to which Payne 
returned faltering, evidently fabricated, answers. Major 
Smith then called Mrs. Surratt to the parlour door and 
asked her if she knew this man. She peered short- 
sightedly into the dim hall, scanning the rough-looking 
man, then raised her hand and said: "Before God, I 
never saw him before." Payne said nothing. Major 
Smith then told Payne he was a suspicious character and 
must be placed under arrest. 

The carriage had come, and Mrs. Surratt was ordered 
to fetch the bonnets and shawls of the women; which she 
did, under guard. When she had returned to the parlour 
and they were ready to go, she asked permission to kneel 
down and pray. 1 This was granted, and she knelt for a 
minute or two. Then she and the others went quietly 
down the steps, entered the carriage, and were driven to 
General Augur's headquarters, and from there, after a long 
cross-questioning, to the square containing Carroll and 
Old Capitol Prisons. Mrs. Surratt was confined tempo- 
rarily in the latter, and transferred thence to one of the 
monitors ; the three other women were assigned to Carroll. 

*C. T. pp. 121-124. 



164 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Miss Anna begged piteously to be allowed to share her 
mother's prison, but was refused. 

When the carriage that took them away returned to 
H Street, Morgan put Payne into it, in charge of Thomas 
Samson and Charles N. Roach, and it was again driven 
to General Augur's, whence Payne was taken, later that 
morning, to the monitor Saugus, where he was put in 
double irons in the hold. 1 

Sam Arnold was arrested at Fortress Monroe on Mon- 
day morning, being the first conspirator captured. He 
had been clerking in a sutler's store outside the fort for 
two weeks, and sleeping in a room back of the store. 
He had not been away from the store since April 1st, 
but he was hurried to Washington, heavily ironed, and 
on Wednesday was put in the hold of the Saugus along 
with Payne. Any remote likelihood of the prisoners 
communicating with each other was reduced to impossi- 
bility by "a canvas bag put on the head of each, and 
tied around the neck, with a hole for proper breathing 
and eating, but not seeing." 2 All the prisoners with the 
exception of Mrs. Surratt wore these bags during their 
confinement on the monitors and in the penitentiary, 
through the hot days of spring and summer; all wore 
double irons, and, in addition to these, Payne was chained 

1 Report No. 99, 30th Congress, First Session; see Appendix XXVI: Note on Awards. 
3 Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, May 27, 1865. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 165 

down. No one was allowed to communicate with any 
prisoner, except on order signed by both the Secretary 
of War and the Secretary of the Navy. 

O'Laughlin was also arrested on Monday, in Balti- 
more, though not at his home. He had gone to Wash- 
ington on Thursday to see the illumination and parades, 
and returned to his home (which was with his brother- 
in-law, P. H. Maulsby, at 57 North Exeter Street) about 
seven o'clock Saturday evening. Detectives had already 
been there looking for him, and when O'Laughlin heard 
this he told Maulsby that he would not stay at home to 
be arrested as it would kill his mother, but would go to 
the house of a friend named Bailey, on High Street, 
whither Maulsby took the detectives on Monday morn- 
ing. 1 On Wednesday O'Laughlin joined the hooded, 
manacled colony on the Saugus; on the seventh of July he 
went to the Dry Tortugas for a life term; and on the 
twenty-third of September, 1867, he died there of yellow 
fever. 

On what information Arnold and O'Laughlin were 
arrested so promptly the records do not tell us; but 
John Surratt's explanation makes it clear; he said, in his 
Rockville lecture of December 8, 1870, that the abduction 
plot was known to the Government detectives, who quite 

1 C. T. p. 232, Maulsby; p. 221, Wallace. 



166 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

naturally jumped to the conclusion that the men involved 
in it were those implicated in the President's murder. 
Edward Spangler, the scene-shifter, was also in Mon- 
day's drag-net. He was arrested late in the day at the 
house on the southeast corner of Seventh and H Streets, 
where he took his meals. Spangler slept at the theatre, 
but he had a carpet-bag at the boarding-house. This, 
when taken in evidence by the detectives, revealed damag- 
ing contents as follows: One piece of rope eighty feet 
long (probably purloined from the theatre for the pur- 
pose of crab-fishing, which was Spangler's favourite 
pastime), some blank paper, and a dirty shirt-collar. 1 
What landed Spangler in irons was the excited statement 
of two coloured women living in the alley back of the 
theatre, to the effect that Booth had called "Ned" when 
he brought his horse to the stage-door on the fateful 
night; also the story of "Peanuts," John Miles, a coloured 
boy, and Sleichmann, a stage-hand, about "Ned" hand- 
ing over Booth's horse to Burroughs; and the charge of 
Jake Ritterspaugh, another scene-shifter, that when 
Booth made his flight across the stage and out the door 
into the alley, Spangler said to Ritterspaugh: "Don't 
say which way he went." 2 

1 C. T. p. 98, William Eaton, Charles H. Rosch. 

* C. T. pp. 73-76, 81, 97, Sleichmann, Burroughs, Turner, Anderson, Miles, Ritters- 
paugh. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 167 

Spangler was taken first to the Old Capitol Prison, 
along with the other Ford's Theatre folk herded there 
on general suspicion; but as the story of what he said to 
Ritterspaugh grew and grew with every re-telling, it 
began to look as if the scene-shifter who had done hostler 
work for "Mr. John" must be a very bad man indeed, 
and he was transferred to the monitor and ironed and 
hooded like the rest. 

At ten o'clock Friday night, April 14th, Atzerodt left 
the oyster bay to which he had returned after the meeting 
at the Herndon House whereat he had refused to kill 
Johnson, and went to Naylor's stable for his horse. He 
asked foreman Fletcher to go with him to the Union 
Hotel near by — at E and Thirteen-and-a-Half Streets — 
and take a drink. This they did, returning afterward 
to the stable, where Fletcher complained to Atzerodt of 
Davy Herold staying so late with the horse he had hired. 
"Oh, he'll be back after a while," said Atzerodt, and 
left, going to the Kirkwood House where he had regis- 
tered that morning. He stayed there but a few moments, 
came out and mounted his horse and rode it to Keleher's 
stable at Eighth and E Streets, where he had hired it 
earlier in the day. It was about eleven o'clock when he 
returned the horse, and between 11.30 and twelve he 
got on a Navy Yard car at Sixth Street and the Avenue 



168 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

and was spoken to by Washington Briscoe, who had known 
him for seven or eight years. Briscoe asked Atzerodt if he 
had heard the news (meaning, of course, the news of the 
President's assassination) and Atzerodt said he had; he 
seemed very much excited, and begged Briscoe to let 
him sleep with him at the Navy Yard, where Briscoe had 
a store in which he lived. This Briscoe refused, and 
Atzerodt got out of the car with him at Garrison and 
I Streets and waited with him till the car came back on 
its return trip, when Atzerodt boarded it. 1 

Where he was for the next two hours we do not know, 
but about 2.30 a. m. he went to the Pennsylvania House 
where he had stopped several times, the last time so lately 
as Wednesday night. With him, either by accident or by 
design, was a rather small, shabby, weather-beaten man, 
quite dark-complexioned, who gave his name as Samuel 
Thomas, paid in advance for a night's lodging, and was 
shown with Atzerodt to a room with six beds in it. At 
four o'clock another lodger was brought to this room — 
No. 53 — and went to bed; his name was Lieutenant 
W. R. Keim, and as he was undressing he spoke to Atzerodt, 
with whom he had shared a room at this house before, 
asking if he had heard of the assassination. Atzerodt said 
yes, and added that it was "an awful thing." 



1 C. T. p. 146, Washington Briscoe, John Fletcher. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 169 

The man Thomas left the hotel at five in the morning, 
asking the way to the depot and apparently bound for the 
6.15 a. M. train. Atzerodt left about six. 1 At eight, or 
thereabouts, he was in Georgetown, where he borrowed of 
John Caldwell, a man he knew, ten dollars, giving his 
revolver (bought only a month ago) as security. 2 At ten or 
eleven Sunday morning Atzerodt had reached the neigh- 
bourhood of Barnsville, Montgomery County, Maryland, 
about twenty-two miles from Washington. Here, when the 
rumoured assassination of General Grant was mentioned, 
Atzerodt is reported to have said something that sounded 
like "If the man that was to follow him has followed him, 
it is likely to be so." This was said in the house of a man 
named Hezekiah Metz, to whose daughter Atzerodt had 
been paying his addresses. That day, however, Miss 
Metz turned such a cold shoulder on her admirer that he 
did not stay long, but went, about two o'clock, to the 
house of his cousin, Hartman Richter, who lived near by. 
There he stayed until he was dragged out of bed and 
arrested at four o'clock in the morning of Thursday, April 
20th; Richter was also arrested. 3 

The arrest was made by Sergeant L. W. Gemmill of the 
First Delaware Cavalrv, with a detail of six men from his 



1 C. T. pp. 146-147, John Greenwalt, James Walker, Lieut. Keim. 

2 C T. p. 148, John Caldwell. 

1 C T. p. 149, Hezekiah Metz, Sergeant L. VV. Gemmill. 



170 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

regiment, and a grateful Government paid $25,000 for 
this daring " capture." 1 

When in irons on the Montauk, to which he was trans- 
ferred from the Saugus on Stanton's orders, April 21st, 
Atzerodt asked to see James L. McPhail, Provost-Mar- 
shal of the State of Maryland, on whose force was a brother- 
in-law of Atzerodt's, while a brother of his had been on it 
but was not now. These two men urged on McPhail that 
Atzerodt wished to see him, and McPhail got a pass admit- 
ting him to the Montauk, where he heard Atzerodt's state- 
ment. 2 Atzerodt also made a statement to Captain Frank 
Monroe, U. S. N., who had charge of him on board the 
monitor. The statements he made were used in the track- 
ing of Booth and Herold, but were not allowed in evidence 
to save his own life. 3 

Dr. Mudd was arrested on Friday, April 21st, by detec- 
tives Lovett, Gavacan, Williams, and Lloyd, and taken 
to Bryan town; he was allowed to go home that- night 
on his promise to return the next morning. On Monday 
he was taken to Washington, where he was confined first 
in Carroll Prison. 4 

With the arrival in Washington of Herold, in the very 



1 Report No. 90, 39th Congress, First Session, Committee of Claims. 

2 C. T. p. 148, Marshal McPhail. 

3 C. T. p. 150, Captain Monroe, U. S. N. 

*C. T. pp. 87-90, 168, Lovett, Dana, Williams, Gavacan, Lloyd, Wells; " Life of Dr. 
Mudd," p. 34. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 171 

early morning of April 27th, the rounding up of those 
to be tried for conspiracy to murder President Lincoln, 
Vice-President Johnson, Lieutenant-General Grant, and 
Secretaries Seward and Stanton, was complete. The 
prisons were full of suspects who might later be tried as 
accessories, but for the present at least trial would proceed 
against Herold, Atzerodt, Payne, O'Laughlin, Arnold, 
Mrs. Surratt, and Dr. Mudd. 

On the first day of May, the Attorney-General (Speed) 
having given it as his opinion that these persons were 
"subject to the jurisdiction of, and lawfully triable before, 
a Military Commission," President Johnson ordered that 
the assistant Adjutant-General detail nine competent 
military officers to serve as such a Commission; that the 
trial be conducted by the Judge- Advocate-General (Joseph 
E. Holt) in person, aided by his assistant and such special 
Judge- Advocates as he might designate ; and that Brevet- 
Major-General Hartranft be assigned to duty as special 
Provost-Marshal-General for the trial. 

On May 6th the assistant Adjutant-General, W. A. 
Nichols, appointed Major-Generals David Hunter and 
Lewis Wallace, Brevet-Major-Generals August V. Kautz, 
Brigadier-Generals Albion P. Howe, Robert S. Foster, 
and T. M. Harris, Brevet-Brigadier-General Cyrus 
B. Comstock, Brevet-Colonel Horace Porter, and 



172 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Lieutenant-Colonel David R. Clendenin, to serve as 
Commissioners. 

May 9th General Comstock and Colonel Porter were 
relieved from duty, and Brevet-Brigadier-General James 
A. Ekin and Brevet-Colonel C. H. Tompkins assigned 
to duty in their places respectively. 

On that day the Commission was sworn, various other 
legal preliminaries not interesting to the lay mind were 
got through with, and the prisoners were arraigned on a 
wordy charge and specification, the sum and substance of 
which was that they had "combined, confederated, and 
conspired," together with John Surratt, John Wilkes Booth 
the "Canada Cabinet," and the President and other high 
officials of the Confederacy, and with "others unknown," 
to kill Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Seward, and Stanton. 

All the prisoners at the bar pleaded to this charge and 
specification "Not Guilty," whereupon the Commission 
adjourned to meet on Thursday morning, May 11th, at 
ten o'clock a. m. 1 

On April 29th the prisoners on the ironclads had 
been transferred from the custody of Commodore Mont- 
gomery, Commandant of the Navy Yard, to that of General 
Hancock, in command of the defences of the capital. 
General Hancock ordered them confined in cells on the 



1 C. T. pp. 17-23; O. R. Series II, vol. viii, p. 699. 




1 I 



5 = 



- H 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 173 

third floor of the old penitentiary building in the Arsenal 
grounds, under the cellar floor of which John Booth had 
then for two nights and a day been sleeping. This build- 
ing, erected in 1836, had not been used for a prison since 
the breaking out of the war, when the convicts then con- 
fined there were sent to Albany, N. Y. 

That there might be as little difficulty as possible in 
getting the heavily-manacled prisoners from their cells to 
the court room, it was determined to fit up for the trial a 
room close by the cells. This room was 30 by 45 feet, with 
a ceiling not more than eleven feet high, and had only four 
windows, which were covered with a thick iron ffratinsr. 
The room was whitewashed for the occasion, new tables 
and chairs were bought, and a prisoners' dock was built 
along the western end of the room. This dock was a 
platform about four feet broad and raised some twelve 
inches from the floor. It had a strong railing in front of it, 
entirely separating the prisoners from all in the room. 
Near the south end of the wall against which this was built 
was the door leading to the corridor on which were the 
cells. 1 

Each prisoner was confined in a separate cell under 
four guards; all, except Mrs. Surratt, wore bags of rough 
gray flannel over their heads — replacing the canvas sacks 

'Washington Star, May 12, 1865; Frank Leslie's Weekly, May 27, 1865; Harper's 
Weekly, June 3, 1865. See Appendix XXVII: Note on curious crowds at trial. 



174 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

of the monitors — tied under their chins, with a single slit 
in them over the mouth. In addition, each wore hand- 
cuffs fastened together by a bar of iron fourteen inches 
long; and on the left ankle a shackle with a two-foot chain 
to the other end of which was fastened a cone-shaped iron 
weight of about 75 pounds. This being deemed insuf- 
ficient in the cases of Payne and Atzerodt, some further 
weight and hindrance of ball and chain was attached to 
them. 1 

When they shuffled into the prisoners' dock with seven 
soldiers, separating each one of them from his nearest 
neighbours, they were further restrained by an iron bar 
which fastened them all together by passing through a hole 
in the apex of each of the 75-pound weights. Their hoods 
were removed when they were taken into court. 

As they entered the door at the corner of their dock, 
Arnold came first, then a soldier, then Dr. Mudd, then a 
soldier, then Spangler, a soldier, O'Laughlin, a soldier, 
Atzerodt, a soldier, Payne, a soldier, Herold, a soldier; 
last came Mrs. Surratt, always heavily veiled. She sat 
a little apart from her fellow prisoners, at the extreme left 
of the dock as the spectators faced it. As she sat in her 
corner this is what she saw: In front of the railing 
of the dock two tables, at which the prisoners' counsel 



1 Leslie's Weekly, May 27, 1865. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 175 

sat. Over near a window about the centre of the room's 
north side (to her left) the seat of the Judge-Advocate- 
General and his assistants. In front of them a long table, 
around which sat the nine members of the Military Com- 
mission, each in the full uniform of his rank, General 
Hunter, President of the Commission, at the eastern end 
of the table, facing the prisoners. The main entrance to 
the court-room was behind General Hunter, in the north- 
east corner of the room, diagonally opposite Mrs. Surratt. 
Down the centre of the room were three wooden pillars 
supporting the ceiling. Between pillars one and two 
(reckoning from the dock) there was a table where the 
official stenographers sat, and beyond that and very close 
to it the witness stand. Then came the second pillar, and 
beyond that another table used by the court for various 
purposes. Beyond the third pillar was a wooden box in 
which were kept various articles used in evidence: Booth's 
slit boot found at Dr. Mudd's, his saddle discovered on 
Cox's farm where his horse was shot, the things taken from 
his pockets by Conger — all but the diary! — and the little 
Deringer picked up off the floor of the box after he jumped; 
Payne's compass seized by his "captors," and his boot 
with Booth's name faintly discernible in it; knives which 
Payne and Atzerodt threw away ; Spangler's piece of crab- 
bing-rope, etc. Balancing the table of the Commissioners, 



176 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

on the south side of the room, was the press table; at the 
far east end of the room were a few chairs for spectators. 

Hon. Reverdy Johnson, Maryland's most prominent 
lawyer and statesman, volunteered his services in the 
defence of Mrs. Surratt, whom he had never seen until he 
visited her in prison on May 12th and in a talk with her 
became convinced of her innocence. She was further 
represented by Frederick Aiken and John W. Clampitt. 
Dr. Mudd had the extremely able counsel of General 
Thomas Ewing, a distinguished officer of the Union army, 
brother-in-law of General Sherman, and an excellent 
lawyer; also the assistance of Mr. Frederick Stone, who 
further represented Herold ; while General Ewing was also 
chief counsel for Arnold and Spangler. Payne and 
Atzerodt were represented by a brilliant legal orator, 
William E. Doster. Walter S. Cox had charge of 
O'Laughlin's case. Each of the accused made a motion 
for a separate trial, but it was in each instance refused. 

The taking of testimony began Friday morning, May 
12th, Lieutenant-General Grant being one of the first 
witnesses. 

The penitentiary was nearest to the city side of the 
Arsenal grounds, and farthest from the river side. Four- 
and-a-half Street ends at the Arsenal gate, and in those 
days it ran straight into the old prison gate and ended there 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 177 

actually though not technically; because in the extension 
northward of the Arsenal grounds in '61, the bit of Four- 
and-a-half Street which was taken in then became an 
Arsenal road. 

Not many sounds went floating up to those four grated 
windows of the court-room, but the warmth of spring and 
presently the heat of summer came stealing through before 
the long sessions were over. With anywhere upward of 
fifty persons occupying a space 30x45 feet under an 11-foot 
ceiling, the air must always have been heavy, drowsy. 

Outside, in Washington, was springtime, such riot of 
springtime as only the beautiful Capital City knows. 
One wonders if, as the long sessions wore on, Davy Herold's 
mind did not sometimes wander from these questions of 
life and death — practically certain death to him — to 
the open country where he so dearly loved to ride; if 
Spangler did not think wistfully of the crab-fishing that 
was going on pleasurably, unmindful of his changed 
estate; if the Florida boy whose life had been lived out of 
doors never sighed for a breath of spring, for a smell of 
moist, fruitful earth. 

And, down beneath the bricks of the cellar floor in this 
same grim building, lay all that was mortal of beautiful 
John Booth, his clustering curls matted with blood and his 
winsome smile forever set in the agony of an awful death. 



178 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

It is doubtful if ever in the history of jurisprudence a 
trial has been held in which justice was more difficult to 
approximate. First of all, there was sectional feeling, 
which had been running high for years, higher for the last 
four years, and was now lashed into its highest fury by 
the common belief that the Confederate leaders were 
responsible for Lincoln's death. Then there was the 
natural rage against the alleged slayers of a beloved ruler, 
accentuated by the manner and the moment of that ruler's 
taking off. Thirdly, there was politics, by reason of the 
fact that the prisoners were believed to be affiliated with 
that secret organization known as "Sons of Liberty," 
which was opposed to the war, in league with the 
Democrats, supported McClellan, and was deemed by 
most ardent Republicans treasonable and treacherous. 
There was a religious bitterness, too. The Surratts were 
Catholics, Dr. Mudd was a Catholic, O'Laughlin was a 
Catholic, and the report gained wide currency that all 
of those apprehended were of the Roman communion and 
that the Church of Rome had planned the slaughter of the 
President. Another factor was the great rewards offered 
for the apprehension of Booth, Herold, Atzerodt, Payne, 
and John Surratt. And lastly, in addition to all the usual 
things which tend to defeat the ends of justice in a criminal 
trial, there was the extraordinary notoriety to be gained by 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 179 

sensational testimony at any of the sessions whose least 
word (when the court allowed) was published far and wide 
and discussed as almost never before or since has trial 
evidence been discussed. 

There were witnesses who would swear anything to 
prove that the crime was chargeable to Jefferson Davis, 
to the Democrats, to the Catholics; there were witnesses 
who would swear anything to get the rewards or the 
notoriety; there were witnesses who were anxious chiefly 
to prove the important parts they played; and witnesses 
who, not daring to hope they might prove themselves 
important, had perforce to be content with disproving the 
fancied importance of some one else. There were excit- 
able witnesses who thought they saw things we know they 
could never have seen; suborned witnesses who were 
willing to have seen anything, for a consideration; 
intimidated witnesses, anxious to save their own skins; 
and so on. 

The trial, which seems hideously unfair to us now, was 
probably as fair as a trial could be in those circumstances, 
in those times. From the point of view of the prisoners 
it was inhuman. But from the point of view of the frenzied 
North it seemed quite equitable. There are many things 
which may safely be remembered to-day in extenuation of 
some at least, if not of all, of the prisoners, that doubt- 



ISO THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

less had, in the wide interests of the Nation, to be disre- 
garded then. 

It was, for instance, feared by many in the North that 
the war was not really over; that on the slightest relaxation 
of severity in the attitude of the victors the vanquished 
would again resort to arms — not as Confederate States 
again, perhaps, but as separate armed bodies, engaged here 
and there, as the spirit of revolt moved them, in guerrilla 
warfare. 

The outraged North cried loudly for vengeance — for- 
getting how he hated vengeance for whose sake they desired 
it — and those in authority had their ears to the ground. 
Stanton, the relentless, hated anything that defied his 
iron rule, hated the "treacherous and dangerous enemy" 
he had worked so ceaselessly to subdue ; he hated Southern 
women in particular, and he hated all Catholics in general. 
Judge-Advocate-General Holt was an especial alarmist 
on the "Sons of Liberty," 1 and could never quite forgive 
Lincoln for treating them as a joke. Johnson was zealous 
to show himself righteously incensed by the crime that 
made him President, and the best way he could do this and 

1 See Holt's alarmed letter to Stanton, published in the New York Tribune, October 17, 
1864. Holt recommended the hanging of Horsey, Milligan.and Bowles, sentenced in the 
Indiana Treason Trial, on December 18, 1864; but Lincoln refused to take action against 
these "Sons of Liberty," and on April 3, 1866, the United States Supreme Court declared 
sentence by a military commission illegal, and the men were freed. See Rhodes, vol. 
v., pp. 316-329. Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii., pp. 8 et seq. Indianapolis Treason Trials, 
reported by Pitman, published by Moore, Wilstach and Baldwin. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 181 

put down the feeling that his hands were not quite clean, 
was to lend what authority of his office was needed to a 
rigorous prosecution. 

The public prints were full of inflammatory articles — 
quite comical to read now — which represented that oddly 
assorted little band of prisoners as the most desperate and 
bloodthirsty villains that ever menaced the safety of a 
nation. Pictures were taken of them as they looked after 
days of hideous confinement in the holds of the monitors, 
and hair-raising tales were freely circulated about them. 
Here and there throughout the country were a few persons 
who knew different — who had known these young men 
and that motherly, neighbourly matron, and knew that, 
whatever might be proved against them in this great crime, 
nothing could alter the entire humanness of their simple 
lives hitherto. But these were few compared to the 
millions who believed, as they were told, otherwise; their 
feeble voices of pleading defence were lost in the tumultu- 
ous crying for blood. 

Under these conditions the trial went forward, while the 
only heart that could have inspired a great forgivingness 
lay still in Oak Ridge Cemetery at Springfield, Illinois. 
A good part of the first few days was taken up with a weak 
attempt to implicate the Confederate leaders. There is 
fair reason to believe that members of the "Canada 



182 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Cabinet" knew of Booth's plans for the abduction of 
President Lincoln, but none whatever to show that they 
plotted his death. Much of the testimony that 
attempted to prove them guilty of such conspiracy was 
later proved perjury. 1 

Not much could be urged in Davy Herold's behalf, not 
much in Lewis Payne's. Davy was with Booth in his 
flight, and if he had not conspired with him, at least he 
came within the death penalty under Stanton's proclama- 
tion of April 20th, declaring "all persons harbouring or 
secreting" Booth, Surratt, or Herold, "or either of them, 
or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will 
be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President 
and the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State, 
and shall be subject to trial before a Military Commission 
and the punishment of death." 2 

And the Florida boy made no defence, nor could any be 
made for him. It was not his fault, but the over-ruling of 
Providence, that he did not leave five dead behind him in 
the Seward household. Not that five dead were any great 
matter, though, to this boy of not a ± uite twenty, who had 
been through the carnage of Chancellorsville, Antietam, 

1 See "The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt," by David Miller DeWitt, published 
by J. Murphy, Baltimore, 1895; also Rogers's Minority Report, House Committee on 
Assassination, Report No. 104, 39th Congress, First Session. See Appendix III: 
Note on Confederate complicity. 

2 O R. Series I, vol. xlvi., part iii., p. 847. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 183 

Gettysburg; not that it seemed unsoldierlike to him to go 
single-handed into the home of one of the nation's heads, 
and strike as for four years he had struck in battle at the 
nation's defenders. Mr. Doster pleaded eloquently for the 
boy; pleaded the responsibility of the Nation that had 
allowed him to go to school, first to slavery and then to 
war, and that ought to give him one better chance before 
sending him out of the world. To all this the boy listened 
apathetically. He was willing, yes, eager, to die; his sole 
cause for anguish was that he believed himself responsible, 
by his midnight return to her house, for the probable doom 
of Mrs. Surratt. 

It could be said for Atzerodt that if he had undertaken 
to "lie in wait for Andrew Johnson with the intent unlaw- 
fully and maliciously to kill and murder him," he had not 
been very indefatigable about it, for the said Andrew John- 
son was lying drunk in his room all evening, and Atzerodt 
was not, according to the evidence, in the Kirk wood House 
during that whole time except for five minutes. 1 It could 
not, however, be proved that he was without guilty knowl- 
edge of the plot to kill the President and the Secretary of 
State, and while that was not the charge against him it 
was probably the charge on which he was actually, though 

1 The room rented by Atzerodt was in a different wing from that in which the Vice- 
President lodged, and removed by many perplexing turns and four flights of stairs from 
the quarters of Andrew Johnson. 



184 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

not technically, convicted. For more than two hours 
before Booth and Payne committed their crimes Atzerodt, 
by his own confession, knew their intent. Personal 
cowardice kept him from performing his allotted share, 
and if he hated bloodshed enough to refuse participation 
in it, he did not hate it enough to forestall it by giving 
warning against the designs of his friends. 

There was no great pother about the death sentence 
on these three. Lewis Payne was friendless in the 
Capital and in all the North, practically. Atzerodt, 
the carriage-painter, had none to make violent outcry 
over his fate. Davy Herold had a widowed mother and 
seven sisters whose hearts broke over him, and a lot of 
old schoolmates who marvelled sadly at the awful thing 
in which bright, likable Davy was overtaken. 1 But 
there was no loud outcry. That was reserved princi- 
pally for Mrs. Surratt and, after her, for Dr. Mudd. 

Dr. Mudd (who was thirty-two years old, and not 
forty-five as commonly represented) 2 was a cultivated, 
kindly Christian gentleman, a hard-working country 



1 The present writer has talked with many men who knew Davy Herold well, and 
liked him well — including Rear-Admiral George N. Baird, U. S. N., Retired, who 
went to school with Davy, and Mr. Walter Burton who was a frequent and intimate 
caller on Davy's sisters, and saw much of Davy at home as well as at the National Hotel. 

2 He was born on his father's large plantation in Charles County, Maryland, on Decem- 
ber 20, 1833. He was a graduate of Georgetown College and, in 1856, of the school of 
medicine and surgery of the University of Maryland, at Baltimore. He was married on 
November 26, 1857, to his childhood sweetheart, Miss Sarah Francis Dyer. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 185 

practitioner, a devoted young husband and father, a 
good son and brother. There was not a particle of evi- 
dence that he knew anything of the plot to kill, although 
he probably knew of the earlier plot to capture. If he 
recognized Booth when the assassin was at his house, 
it was before he had heard of Booth's mad deed; and if 
he "aided or assisted" in his "concealment or escape," 
it was five days before Stanton's proclamation made 
that treasonable. There was nothing to show that Booth 
had told Dr. Mudd of his crime, and everything to show 
that he had not. Nevertheless, Dr. Mudd, after suffer- 
ing all the horrors of brutal imprisonment while trial 
was pending and in progress, was sentenced for life to 
the Dry Tortugas, an island of absolute barrenness more 
than one hundred miles from the nearest point of main- 
land in Florida. On this island is the largest, most 
expensive, and most useless fortification of masonry the 
United States has ever built. Dr. Mudd was allowed to 
see his wife but once after his arrest, and that was on the 
sixth of July, the day before the execution of four of his 
fellows and a day or two before his departure with the 
three others for Dry Tortugas. The scaffold was being 
erected when Mrs. Mudd entered the penitentiary yard, 
and as she was leaving she saw poor Anna Surratt come 
to bid her mother good-bye. Guards were present at 



186 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

the brief interview between husband and wife, and in 
the presence of soldiers they parted — forever, by the 
terms of his sentence. 1 

Arnold 2 and O'Laughlin' also received life sentences, 
and Spangler was sentenced for six years. 4 

Mrs. Surratt's case excited the country more than all 
the others together. She was a woman, she was widowed 
of her natural defender, she was a mother. She was 
highly educated, refined, a Christian, and had hitherto 
led a blameless life. 

The charges against her were made by Weichmann — 
whom she had treated as a son and who, by his reputed 
confession and by a world of evidence, probably turned 
State's evidence in fear and to save his own neck; and by 
her tenant, Lloyd, who admitted that he was drunk 
on the day when Mrs. Surratt said to him certain things 
he repeated against her, a month later, to her undoing, 
and who was not able to recall any of these things until 
they promised to be worth a part of $75,000 ; 6 and by 

1 " Life of Dr. Mudd," p. 40. Dr. Mudd was pardoned by President Johnson on Febru- 
ary 13, 1869, released from prison March 8th, reached home March 20th. j He was thirty- 
five years old then, a frail, broken, almost destitute man. He died of pneumonia on 
January 10, 1883, and was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, at Bryantown Church, where 
he first met Booth. 

2 Arnold was also pardoned by President Johnson, February 13, 1869. 

3 At the time the pardons were issued to Mudd, Arnold and Spangler, an order was 
given for the disinterment of O'Laughlin's remains and their delivery to his mother. 

* Spangler lived only eighteen months after his release, being cared for during all 
that time by Dr. Mudd. For Spangler's statement, see Appendix XXVIII. 

* C T. p. 87, Lloyd. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 187 

the officers at her arrest who repeated against her her 
declaration that she had never before seen Payne. 1 

The incontrovertible evidence against Mrs. Surratt 
was that for about three months before the assassination 
John Booth had been a frequent caller at her house; 
that Payne had twice in the month of March stayed there 
— once over night only, the other time for two or three 
days; that Atzerodt had several times spent a night there. 2 
There was no evidence that Arnold, O'Laughlin, Mudd, 
or Spangler had ever been there, and slight evidence to 
show that Davy Herold had ever gone there. Incon- 
trovertible, too, was the fact that Booth called on Mrs. 
Surratt soon after he projected the murder, on Friday 
afternoon about two o'clock, and that she went soon 
thereafter to Surrattsville. 3 But there was nothing in 
any of this to hang a woman; and by every count there 
was exactly as much against Weichmann as against 
Mrs. Surratt. There was no reason why he should not 
have been tried and hanged, except that he was given 
immunity for his evidence. 4 

Probable evidence against Mrs. Surratt tends to prove 



1 C. T. pp. 1 21-123, Smith, Wermerskirch. 

2 C. T. pp. 121, 130-135, Miss Fitzpatrick, Anna Surratt, Mrs. Holohan, Miss Anna 
Ward. 

3 C. T. pp. hi, 125, 126, Mrs. Emma Offutt, George H. Calvert, B. F. Gwynne, John 
Nothey. See Appendix XXIX.: Note on Nothey. 

4 See Appendix XXX.: Statement of John P. Brophy. 



188 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

that she knew of the abduction plot, and that if she 
deplored its dangers, she did not deplore its design. 
Not many Northern women would have deplored a plot 
to seize Jefferson Davis in Richmond and take him to 
Washington in the hope of ending the war, though they 
might have been tearfully anxious to think of their own 
boys in such a hazardous undertaking. It is also prob- 
able that Mrs. Surratt carried, at Booth's request, a small 
package to Surrattsville the day of the murder and left 
it with Lloyd, saying that it would be called for. Even 
if she knew what was in the package — a field-glass — 
such knowledge would hardly argue her acquaintance 
with Booth's intent to murder. It is probable that when 
Booth learned she was going to Surrattsville (and Weich- 
mann, on whose testimony all this rests, said the journey 
was determined on before Booth called) he asked her 
to tell Lloyd that the carbines left with him by John 
Surratt, Atzerodt, and Herold about five weeks ago, 
would be called for that night. Their immediate readi- 
ness on demand was not a great matter, but it would 
save a few minutes' delay; though, in the event of a 
few minutes meaning much, it is hardly likely that 
Booth would stop at all, as his safety would lie 
more in flight and concealment than in firearms. But 
even if he asked Mrs. Surratt to deliver his message 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 189 

to Lloyd, it is not necessarily implied that he told 
her his reasons. 

At least the likelihood of her innocence was as great 
as the likelihood of her cold-blooded guilt, 1 and feeling 
ran high over her case. To their great shame, certain 
Protestants believed she must be guilty because she was 
a Catholic; while many Catholics, on the other hand, 
acted in as mistaken zeal and argued that because she 
was a Catholic, she must be innocent. If some Protestant 
zealots charged the Church of Rome with her alleged 
crime, some adherents of the Church of Rome were as 
foolish in accepting the charge and feeling the Church 
involved in the controversy. 

It was not really believed, however, that any extreme 
sentence would be pronounced upon Mrs. Surratt in 
view of her age, her sex, her previous reputation, and the 
character of the evidence against her. And between 
the time sentence was pronounced and the time it was 
carried into execution the interval was so brief that 
nothing could be done. She was sentenced on July Cth 
and hanged on July 7th. 

After signing the decree fixing her penalty at death, 
five of the nine judges who condemned her petitioned 
clemency for her on account of her age and sex. This 

1 " Any candid person who will review the evidence will be forced to the conclusion 
that she was an innocent woman." Stewart, p. 169. 



190 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

petition was taken by Judge-Advocate-General Holt to 
President Johnson, who read it in Judge Holt's presence, 
and also considered it at a Cabinet meeting. In the 
outcry that followed on Mrs. Surratt's hanging, Johnson 
tried to disclaim responsibility by swearing he had never 
seen the petition for clemency, and Judge Holt was 
accused of withholding it. This charge embittered all 
the rest of Judge Holt's life, and has given rise to a volumi- 
nous controversy, the simple truth of which seems to be 
that Judge Holt did indeed present the petition — 
whether he argued against it or not — and that Johnson's 
disclaimer and the silence of the Cabinet were a rank 
injustice to a man who, though narrow and bigoted, did 
not merit the charge of dishonour. 1 

The taking of testimony finished Wednesday, June 
14th. The arguments for defence and prosecution, 
with some other court matters, occupied very nearly two 
weeks. It was ten o'clock Thursday morning, June 
29th, when the Commission met, with closed doors, 
to deliberate upon the evidence. On Wednesday, 
July 5th, the sentences of the court were approved 
by the President, who named the Dry Tortugas as 
the place of imprisonment for Mudd, Arnold, O'Laughlin 
and Spangler, and Friday, July 7th, as the day for 

1 See Holt-Johnson Controversy, Appendix XXXI. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 191 

the execution of Payne, Herold, Atzerodt, and Mrs. 
Surratt. 1 

At nine o'clock on Thursday morning, July 6th, General 
Hartranft, the special Provost-Marshal, accompanied 
by the nine judges of the court and the officers of the 
prison, went to the cell of each prisoner and read the 
verdict. Later, the four condemned to die next day 
between the hours of ten and two, were taken to a large 
room on the ground floor, where their friends and spiritual 
advisers were allowed to see them. There was no one 
to see the Florida boy except a Baptist clergyman, Dr. 
Gillette, who was a total stranger to this son of another 
Baptist clergyman alike unknown to him. Atzerodt 
was visited by his mother and by a poor, ignorant woman 
who was said to have been his mistress. Dr. Butler, 
pastor of a Lutheran church in Washington, and an 
army chaplain, was ordered to see Atzerodt and give him 
such spiritual comfort as he would take. He found the 
condemned carriage-painter reading the Bible at that 
passage in Numbers containing the warning: "Be sure 
your sin will find you out." Atzerodt entreated Dr. 
Butler to preach to young men on that text and to drive 
it home to them with the imploring message of a man 
about to die. 2 The saddest scenes were those of which 



1 O. R. Series II., vol. viii., p. 699; see also Appendix XXXII: Order for execution. 

2 Told the present writer by Dr. Butler. 



192 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Davy Herold and Mrs. Surratt were the centres. Davy's 
seven sisters clustered around him in grief so piteous that 
the guards turned away, unable to bear the sight of it. 
And the anguish of poor Anna Surratt moved every one 
to tears. Fathers Walter and Wiget attended her mother 
spiritually, and the frenzied girl went trembling away 
to make appeals for her mother's life. She went to 
Stanton's office but found it barricaded against her, in 
effect, by the War Secretary's strict order that she must 
not be admitted. 1 She went to General Hancock, who 
assured her sadly, gently, that he could do nothing. She 
went, early on Friday morning, to the White House where 
she pleaded in vain to see the President. The nearest 
she could get to him was in the person of General R. D. 
Mussey, his private secretary, at whose feet she threw 
herself begging for mercy. General Mussey said he had 
never lived through moments of such distress; but he, 
too, had received orders to keep out the supplicant at all 
costs. 8 

An attempt to stay the execution through a writ of 

1 Told the present writer by Major A. E. H. Johnson, private secretary to Edwin M. 
Stanton, and the man to whose enormous industry we are principally indebted for the 
compilation of the Official Records. 

2 General Mussey was so anxious to help, that he ordered his horse and light buggy 
brought into the White House portico, where it stood, waiting the President's possible 
relenting, until after the tolling bells assured the general that there would be no eleventh 
hour reprieve for him to carry in mad haste to the doomed woman. Told the present 
writer by General Mussey's widow, Mrs. Ellen Spencer Mussey. See Appendix XXXIII: 
Note on "The Nest that Hatched the Egg." 



1 




Michael O'Laujrhlin 



Edward Spangler 




Sam Arnold Dr. Samuel A. Mudd 

The Four Conspirators Who Were Not Hanged 

Arnold and O'Laughlin received life sentences and Spangler was sen- 
tenced for six years. Dr. Mudd was also sentenced for life but was 
pardoned by President Johnson on February 13, 180!). 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 193 

habeas corpus failed through suspension by the President 
— in whom this power is vested — an order to that effect 
proceeding from the Executive Office at ten o'clock on 
Friday morning. 1 It was confidently believed, almost 
up to the hour of execution, that some influence would 
avail to save Mrs. Surratt, and the tension at the peniten- 
tiary was horrible. 

Since a little after eight o'clock soldiers, spectators, 
newspaper men, clergy, had been assembling at the prison 
to wait in the blistering heat — and wait — and wait. 
Soldiers stood, almost shoulder to shoulder, along the 
high wall surrounding the prison yard. Down below, 
in the grassy enclosure, were many more soldiers forming 
three sides of a large square, the fourth side of which was 
the penitentiary's front. Within the square the gallows 
stood, its platform, reached by fifteen steps, ten feet above 
the ground; the beam, from which four nooses dangled, 
ten feet above that again. Down at the gallows' foot 
were four new wooden boxes at the edges of four freshly 
dug graves. 

The wait was long, in the brazen sun, and nearly 
every one but the soldiers carried an umbrella. At last, 
when it was not far from two o'clock, the barred door 
of the penitentiary opened and a woman walked out, a 

1 See Appendix XXXIV.: Denial of habeas corpus for Mrs. Surratt. 



194 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

middle-aged woman dressed in black, bonneted and 
heavily veiled. On either side of her walked a bare- 
headed priest, behind her walked four soldiers with 
muskets. In the strained silence the low tones of the 
priests muttering the service for the dying were audible 
to every ear. Then came a sound of clanking chains; 
a small, shambling German dragged his fetters toward 
the gallows. Two officers walked before him, a Lutheran 
clergyman walked beside him, a squad of armed soldiers 
brought up the rear. Next came a tottering boy, with 
an Episcopalian rector accompanying him. And last 
walked in the wasted shadow of a splendid young giant, 
with a shock of tawny hair and big blue eyes which 
made one spectator say he looked "rather the bar- 
barian striding in his conqueror's triumph than the 
assassin going to the gallows." 

The condemned were seated on the gallows while the 
warrants were read to them by General Hartranft. When 
he had finished, Dr. Gillette spoke on behalf of Payne, 
not in pleading nor extenuation, but merely to thank the 
prison officials for their kind treatment of him — which 
was not so ironical as it sounds, because the boy seems 
to have made himself liked, and his attendants, while 
they were powerless to mitigate the severity of his irons, 
probably did whatever they could to show him k'-idness, 




< 



o 

« 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 195 

During Dr. Gillette's prayer the boy's big blue eyes 
filled with tears, and he followed in the closing sentences 
of it with deep emotion — the first he had shown since 
his arrest. Dr. Olds then said for Davy Herold that he 
tendered his forgiveness to all who had wronged him, 
and asked the forgiveness of all whom he had wronged. 
He also thanked the officers and guards for kindnesses 
rendered him, and said that he hoped he died in charity 
with all men and at peace with God. Dr. Butler spoke 
and prayed for Atzerodt, and there was no more to be 
said; Mrs. Surratt's confessors, after the custom of their 
Church, remaining silent. 1 

In a few moments the awful preparations were com- 
pleted, the signal was given, the two traps fell, and four 
souls went home to a Tribunal which may safely temper 
justice with mercy. 

Hardly more than an hour after the appearance of 
the black-robed woman at the prison door, four nameless 
graves were full and the grassy yard was quiet again under 
the fiercely beating rays of the summer sun. 

Toward the end of that year there was laid beside 
them the body of Wirz, the keeper of Andersonville, who 
was hanged for atrocities of which he is now believed 

1 George Alfred Townsend in New York World, July 8, 1865; also in his book; also 
in Baker, p. 508, el seq.; Oldroyd, p. 198, et seq.; Croggon in Washington Star, July 7, 
1865. 



196 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

innocent. 1 In 1867 the five bodies were taken up and 
removed to one of the storehouses in the Arsenal grounds. 
The body of Booth was laid beside them, and the old 
penitentiary where it had for two years had sepulture 
was torn down. 

Just before Johnson left office, in February, '69, he 
yielded to the importunities of the Booth, Surratt, and 
Herold families, and allowed the bodies of the conspirators 
to be taken away for interment. Mrs. Surratt was buried 
in Mount Olivet, northeast of Washington, where her 
grave is marked with a modest headstone bearing only the 
name "Mrs. Surratt." Herold was buried in the Con- 
gressional Cemetery, and Atzerodt at Glenwood. Payne's 
body was taken to Holmead, a cemetery which was in after 
years discontinued; what then became of the Florida boy's 
remains is not known. 

In February, when the President's permission was 
secured, Mr. Harvey, a Washington undertaker, drove 
out to the Arsenal grounds one afternoon and returned 
with the gun-box containing Booth's remains. 

The establishment of Harvey and Marr was on F 
Street near Tenth; and after dark on that short winter 
afternoon the little company waiting, tensely, in the back 



1 "A true story of Andersonville Prison: A Defence of Major Henry Wirz," by James 
Madison Page, Late 2d Lieutenant Company A, 6th Michigan Cavalry; published 
by the Neale Publishing Company, New York, 1908. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 197 

shop, heard the sound of hoofs and wheels on the cobble- 
paved alley; some one said "There they are!" and in a 
moment the waggon was backed into the stable. John 
Booth's body had come back, after nearly four years, to 
be coffined at a spot not a stone's throw from where his 
flight began. 

The gun-box was set on trestles in the stable, and a 
lantern was called for; this was the light by which the 
cover was pried off the box, the gray army blanket lifted, 
and the remains disclosed. The head was severed from 
the trunk — as it naturally would be by the removal, at 
the inquest, of the two spinal spools — and it was passed 
from hand to hand and mused upon. Like poor Yorrick, 
that long, long ago actor, John Booth was also "a fellow 
of infinite jest." In the next room sat the great Hamlet, 
waiting. 

The identification being satisfactory — aided by the 
dentist who had filled John Booth's teeth — the body, in 
a handsome new casket, was sent to Baltimore that night, 
and the following day was interred in the family lot at 
Greenmount, where it lies beneath thick ivy under the east 
face of the monument reared to the elder Junius Brutus 
Booth by his son Edwin in 1858. 1 

1 James Croggon in Washington Star, January 5, 1007; also from facts related to the 
present writer by Mr. H. Clay Ford, Mr. Charles Ford (John T. Ford's son), the Green- 
mount Cemetery authorities, and the Booth family. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX I 

FEELING AGAINST LINCOLN 

It must be remembered that in the summer and fall 
of 1864, Lincoln's position in the country seemed, even to 
his most sanguine friends, more precarious than it had 
ever been. During the first two years of the war, when 
the South was winning almost every fight and her armies 
seemed invincible, the feeling against Lincoln in the 
Confederate States was more contemptuous than violent. 
They thought they "had him licked." But after Lee's 
proud army came back from Gettysburg, and Grant's 
army marched into Vicksburg, and Northern prisons 
began to swell with tens of thousands of men the South 
needed to help her cause, feeling against Lincoln grew 
more sullen, vengeful. In the North, the McClellanites 
were bitter against him; there were many thousands 
of people who hated the war and resented with all their 
might being drafted into a fight for which they had no 
sympathy. There was so much disaffection for Lincoln, 
and his policy of saving the Union at any cost, that there 
was talk of a North- West Confederacy to aid the Southern 

201 



202 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Confederacy. Lincoln's friends did not think he would 
get the renomination, but he did. They felt sure he 
could not get re-election, and so did he. On the eighth 
of September, Leonard Swett wrote from Washington to 
his wife: "We are in the midst of conspiracies equal to 
the French Revolution." Deep down under all the con- 
spiring was the feeling that showed itself in the over- 
whelming returns of Election Day, when the North stood 
by Lincoln in a marvellous way. But buzzing about 
everybody's ears was the sound of conspiracy and dis- 
content, and nearly every heart that knew bitterness 
blamed Lincoln as its cause. 



APPENDIX II 

BOOTH IN CANADA 

Even if we place any dependence on the testimony of 
the men who later confessed themselves or were proved 
perjurers, the evidence regarding Booth's presence in 
Canada amounts only to the following: Richard Mont- 
gomery said W. C. Cleary told him that " Booth had been 
there, visiting Thompson, twice in the winter; he thought 
the last time was in December. He had also been there 
in the summer." (C. T. p. 25.) Conover said: "Booth 
I saw but once. That was in the latter part of October 
last." (C. T. p. 28.) Merritt said he "saw Booth in 
Canada two or three times," but did not undertake to say 
when. (C. T. p. 36.) John Deveny lived in Montreal 
from July, '63, to February, '65. He said he saw Booth 
"standing in the St. Lawrence Hotel, Montreal, talking 
with George N. Sanders. I believe that was in the month 
of October." (C. T. p. 39.) Hosea B. Carter " frequently 
observed George N. Sanders in intimate association with 
Booth" at a time he could not specify, except that it was 
between September 10, '64, and February 1, '65. (C. T. 

203 



204 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

p. 38.) William E. Wheeler was "at Montreal, Canada, 
in October or November last, when I saw John Wilkes 
Booth." (C. T. p. 39.) Robert Anson Campbell sold 
Booth a bill of exchange in Montreal on October 27th. 
(C. T. p. 46.) 



APPENDIX III 

CONFEDERATE COMPLICITY 

The controversy about Confederate complicity in the 
murder of President Lincoln has a history too vast to be 
entered into in less than a bulky volume. At the time of 
the assassination it is probable that a majority of intensely 
loyal Northerners believed the Southern leaders guilty. 
To-day only an inconsiderable remnant of hotheads 
believes anything of the sort. The attitude of the historian 
writing to-day is well expressed by Professor Albert Bush- 
nell Hart, head of the department of history at Harvard. 
Answering a query of the present writer as to what con- 
temporary historical scholarship thinks of the "evidence" 
that Davis and his associates plotted or knew of the murder 
of Lincoln, Professor Hart wrote : "There is not a scintilla 
of reliable evidence proving Confederate complicity in 
Lincoln's murder." James Ford Rhodes says: "The 
belief that there might be some truth in the charge against 
Davis was given up finally by most of the persons who at 
first thought it entitled to consideration." ("History of 
the United States," vol. v., p. 158.) 

205 



206 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

In these days, when we know how most of the "evidence" 
against the Confederate leaders presented at the Conspir- 
acy Trial was obtained, the vindictive bitterness of some 
Northern men is interesting as an example of the lengths 
to which men can be misled by their frenzy. 

A man named John Smith Dye — father of that Sergeant 
Joseph M. Dye whose delirious testimony gave the Military 
Commission of the Conspiracy Trial so much bootless 
bother — wrote a book called "A History of the Plots and 
Crimes of the Great Conspiracy to Overthrow Liberty in 
America," in which he attempts to prove that William 
Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor died by arsenical 
poisoning administered by the friends of slavery (pp. 
36, 64), and that on February 23d, 1857, Buchanan, 
on the eve of his inauguration, was poisoned at the 
National Hotel, Washington, by arsenic put in the sugar 
he used for his tea. This was in punishment, Dye thought, 
for Buchanan's failure to please the Jefferson Davis faction 
in his Cabinet appointments, (p. 91.) 

Henry Ward Beecher, in the New York Ledger of May 
20, 1865, put forward substantially the same ideas. 

John A. Logan in "The Great Conspiracy" — the bit- 
terest, most ungallant of all the books written by generals 
of both armies — says: "That this dark and wicked and 
bloody Rebellion, waged by the upholders and advocates 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 207 

of Slavery, Free Trade, and Secession, had descended so 
low as to culminate in murder — deliberate, cold-blooded, 
cowardly murder — at a time when the Southern con- 
spirators would apparently be least benefitted by it, was 
regarded at first as evidencing their mad fatuity." 
("The Great Conspiracy," p. 647.) 

Nicolay and Hay write of the Conspiracy Trial: "The 
charges against them [the conspirators] specified that they 
were 'incited and encouraged' to treason and murder by 
Jefferson Davis and the Confederate emissaries in 
Canada. This was not proved on the trial." ("Life of 
Lincoln," vol. x., p. 312.) 

General T. M. Harris, a member of the Military Com- 
mission and author of "The Assassination of Lincoln," 
chose to believe — and so late as 1892 to sustain — the 
mass of testimony against the Confederate leaders that 
"was not proved on trial." General Harris says: "It is 
greatly to be regretted that such popular and usually 
reliable authors should have allowed themselves on this 
occasion to write thus loosely, and express opinions and 
conclusions so much at variance with the testimony." 
("The Assassination of Lincoln," by T. M. Harris, 
p. 180.) 

Now for this testimony: It rested chiefly on the evidence 
of one Sanford Conover, one Richard Montgomery, one 



208 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Dr. James B. Merritt, and one Henry Finegas. It was 
Conover, alias James Watson Wallace (tried in Washing- 
ton for perjury in 1867, convicted, and sentenced to Albany 
penitentiary for ten years), who found Merritt, Mont- 
gomery, Finegas, and the rest and rehearsed them in their 
perjuries. (Minority Report of House Committee on 
Assassination, by Rogers, Report No. 104, 39th Congress, 
First Session, p. 39.) Conover swore at the trial that late in 
January and early in February, J 65, and every day in 
February after an early date, he and Jacob Thompson 
talked, at St. Lawrence Hall in Montreal, about the 
assassination of Lincoln. January 1st to February 14th, 
Thompson, by the sworn testimony of many witnesses, 
was in Toronto. And as late as March 20th Conover 
was trying to make Thompson's acquaintance. Conover 
swore that about April 6th, he, Surratt, and General Carroll 
of Tennessee, discussed the assassination of Lincoln in 
Jacob Thompson's room. Two citizens of Montreal — 
General Carroll's physician and his landlord — swore that 
General Carroll was confined to his bed with a very pain- 
ful disease, from April 1st to April 15th. Conover swore 
that other associates of his in Montreal were Captain 
Magruder and Dr. Pallen, both of whom swore they had 
never known such a person existed. 

Montgomery had been a frequent prisoner in the Tombs, 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 209 

New York, and had been convicted of robbery in the New 
York courts. He said he had talked with Thompson in 
Montreal in January, '65 (when Thompson was not in 
Montreal), and that Thompson had told him of the plot to 
kill Lincoln, Stanton, Grant, and others. 

James B. Merritt swore that at a meeting of rebels in 
Montreal, about the middle of February, he heard a letter 
from Jefferson Davis read approving the assassination of 
Lincoln. He said that at this meeting were Captain Scott, 
Colonel Steele, and George Young, all of whom, through- 
out February, were at Windsor, opposite Detroit, COO miles 
from Montreal; and Merritt himself was not once 
during February absent from the village of Ayr, Waterloo 
County, Canada, 600 miles from Montreal. He also said 
that in February, '65, he had conversation with Clement 
C. Clay in Toronto, at which Clay spoke of Davis's letter 
approving the assassination, and said he thought "the end 
would justify the means." Clement C. Clay left Canada 
in November, 1864, and did not return. ("A Belle of the 
Fifties," by Virginia Clay-Clopton, p. 237.) At Windsor, 
where Merritt lived for years, he was known as a dis- 
reputable citizen and common liar (eight prominent 
citizens swore thereto, and in its issue of June 24, 1865, 
The Toronto Globe, a paper conspicuously faithful to the 
North, gave the sworn statements of three justices of the 



210 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

peace of Waterloo County, branding Merritt a lying quack). 
Yet Merritt got from the War Department for his testimony 
$6,000. (Rogers's Report, p. 39.) 

Henry Finegas, whose testimony implicated Sanders 
and Cleary, was a gambler and prizefighter. (Rogers's 
Report, p. 37.) 



APPENDIX IV 

THE LEENEA LETTERS 

On Wednesday, the sixteenth of November, John 
Booth went to New York where he remained for nearly 
a month. 

On Monday, November 14th, General Butler left 
New York; and that was the day that a Mrs. Mary 
Hudspeth, riding on a Third Avenue car in New York 
City, overheard the conversation of two men in front of 
her. "They were talking most earnestly," she testified. 
"One of them said he would leave for Washington the 
day after to-morrow. The other man was going to 
Newburg, or Newbern, that night." The one who was 
going to Washington was educated, Mrs. Hudspeth 
said, and had beautiful hands; he had on false whiskers 
and wore a pistol in his belt. The other was called 
Johnson; he was older and of a rougher sort. They 
exchanged letters while in the car, and after they left 
Mrs. Hudspeth's daughter picked up an envelope with 
two enclosures. One of them began: "Dear Louis," 
and went on to say that the time had come, and "Abe 

211 



212 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

must die." The other was a note beginning: "St. 
Louis, Oct. 21, 1864. Dearest Husband." It was 
signed "Leenea" ; the letter about the killing of the 
President was signed "Charles Selby." "Leenea" had 
nothing to say of assassination; all she wanted was her 
dearest Louis home with his wife and baby. 

Mrs. Hudspeth took these letters to General Scott, 
who asked her to read them to him and then directed 
her to take them to General Dix, which she did. General 
Dix sent them, on the seventeenth of November, to 
Assistant Secretary of War, Charles A. Dana, saying 
that "but for the genuine letter from St. Louis in a female 
hand" he "should have thought the whole thing got up 
for the Sunday Mercurij" — which it not improbably was. 
Mr. Dana showed the letters to President Lincoln, who 
was used to such communications and "seemed to attach 
very little importance to them." 

Nevertheless, much was made of the Selby and Leenea 
letters at the trial of the conspirators, Mrs. Hudspeth 
even swearing that a photograph of Booth was a likeness 
of the younger man she had seen in a Third Avenue car 
seven months before. To make the identification com- 
plete, she spoke of the scar in his neck — not so remark- 
able a feat of memory when we remember that she testi- 
fied on May 12th, when the papers were still full of Booth's 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 213 

death, his official recognition by means of the scar in 
his neck, and other details. 

Even if the incident of the Third Avenue car was on 
November 11th, the day General Butler was ordered to 
leave New York, instead of on November 14th, the day 
he actually left, we know that Booth was not there, 
because that was the only week end "about the middle 
of November" when he could have been in Charles 
County, Maryland, as attested by a dozen witnesses. 
But the Selby letter was gravely considered against him 
in spite of all the strong internal evidence of his having 
had nothing to do with it. It was too late, then, to 
visit more justice upon John Booth, but if the contention 
of the prosecution could be maintained it would show 
that what the conspirators were plotting, as early as 
November, '64, was not capture, but assassination. (C. 
T., pp. 40, 41.) 



APPENDIX V 

DR. MUDD'S STATEMENT 

George W. Dutton, Captain Company C, 10th Veteran 
Reserve Corps, commanding the guard that took Mudd, 
Spangler, Arnold, and O'Laughlin to Fort Jefferson, Dry 
Tortugas, swore that on July 22d Dr. Mudd "con- 
fessed that he knew Booth when he came to his house 
with Herold on the morning after the assassination of the 
President; that he had known Booth for some time, but 
was afraid to tell of Booth's having been at his house on 
April 15th, fearing that his own and the lives of his 
family would be endangered thereby. He also confessed 
that he was with Booth at the National Hotel on the even- 
ing referred to by Weichmann in his testimony, that he 
came to Washington on that occasion to meet Booth by 
appointment, as the latter wished to be introduced to 
John H. Surratt; that when he and Booth were going to 
Mrs. Surratt's house to see her son they met, on Seventh 
Street, Surratt, who was introduced to Booth, and they 
had a conversation of a private nature." (C. T. p. 421.) 
To this, Dr. Mudd replied in a sworn statement dated at 
Fort Jefferson August 28th: 

214 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 215 

1. That I confessed to having known Booth while 
in my house; was afraid to give information of the fact, 
fearing to endanger my life, or made use of any language 
in that connection — I positively and emphatically declare 
to be notoriously false. 

2. That I was satisfied and willingly acquiesced in the 
wisdom and decision of the Military Commission who tried 
me, is again notoriously erroneous and false. On the 
contrary I charged it (the Commission) with irregularity 
injustice, usurpation, and illegality. I confess to being 
animated at the time, but have no recollection of having 
apologized. 

3. I did confess to a casual or accidental meeting 
with Booth in front of one of the hotels on Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue, Washington, D. C, on December 23rd, 
1864, and not on January 15th, 1865, as testified to 
by Weichmann. Booth, on that occasion, desired me to 
give him an introduction to Surratt, from whom he said 
he wished to obtain a knowledge of the country around 
Washington, in order to be able to select a good locality 
for a country residence. He had the number, street, and 
name of John Surratt written on a card, saying to comply 
with his request would not detain me over five minutes. 
(At the time I was not aware that Surratt was a resident to 
Washington.) I declined at first, stating I was with a 
relative and friend from the country and was expecting 
some friends over from Baltimore, who intended going 
down with me to spend Christmas, and was by appoint- 
ment expected to be at the Pennsylvania House by a certain 
hour — eight o'clock. We started down one street, and 
then up another, and had not gone far when we met Surratt 
and Weichmann. 

Introductions took place, and we turned back in the 
direction of the hotel. Arriving there, Booth insisted on 



216 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

our going to his room and taking something to drink 
with him, which I declined for reasons above mentioned; 
but finding that Weichmann and Surratt were disposed 
to accept, I yielded, remarking I could not remain many 
minutes. After arriving in the room, I took the first 
opportunity presented to apologize to Surratt for having 
introduced to him Booth — a man I knew so little con- 
cerning. This conversation took place in the passage 
in front of the room and was not over three minutes in 
duration. Whilst Surratt and myself were in the hall, 
Booth and Weichmann were sitting on the sofa in a 
corner of the room looking over some Congressional 
documents. Surratt and myself returned and resumed 
our former seats (after taking drinks ordered) around a 
centre table, which stood midway the room and distant 
seven or eight feet from Booth and Weichmann. Booth 
remarked that he had been down in the country a few 
days before, and said he had not yet recovered from the 
fatigue. Afterward he said he had been down in 
Charles County, and had made me an offer for the 
purchase of my land, which I confirmed by an affirma- 
tive answer; and he further remarked that on his way 
up he lost his way and rode several miles off the track. 
When he said this he left his seat and came over and 
took a seat immediately by Surratt; taking from his 
pocket an old letter, he began to draw lines, in order to 
ascertain from Surratt the location and description of 
the roads. I was a mere looker-on. The conversation 
that took place could be distinctly heard to any part 
of the room by any one paying attention. There was 
nothing secret, to my knowledge, that took place, with the 
exception of the conversation of Surratt and myself, 
which I have before mentioned. I had no secret con- 
versation with Booth, nor with Booth and Surratt together, 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 217 

as testified to by Weichmann. I never volunteered any 
statement of Booth having made me an offer for the pur- 
chase of my land, but made an affirmative response only 
to what Booth said in that connection. 

Booth's visit in November, 1864, to Charles County, 
was for the purpose, as expressed by himself, to purchase 
land and horses; he was inquisitive concerning the politi- 
cal sentiments of the people, inquiring about the contra- 
band trade that existed between the North and South 
and wished to be informed about the roads bordering on 
the Potomac, which I declined doing. He spoke of his 
being an actor and having two other brothers, who also 
were actors. He spoke of Junius Brutus as being a good 
Republican. He said they were largely engaged in the 
oil business, and gave me a lengthy description of the 
theory of oil, and the process of boring, etc. He said he 
had a younger brother in California. These and many 
minor matters spoken of caused me to suspect him to 
be a Government detective and to advise Surrat regard- 
ing him. 

We were together in Booth's room about fifteen minutes 
after which, at my invitation, they walked up to the 
Pennsylvania House, where the conversation that ensued 
between Weichmann and myself, as testified to by him, 
is, in the main, correct — only that he, of the two, 
appeared the better Southern man, and undertook to 
give me facts from his office to substantiate his statements 
and opinions. This was but a short time after the defeat 
of Hood in Tennessee. The papers stated that over 
nine thousand prisoners had been taken, and that the 
whole of Hood's army was demoralized and falling back, 
and there was every prospect of his whole army being 
either captured or destroyed. To this Weichmann 
replied that only four thousand prisoners had been 



218 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

ordered to be provided for by the Commissary-General 
[in whose office, it will be remembered, Weichmann was 
a clerk] and that he was far from believing the defeat of 
Hood so disastrous. I spoke with sincerity, and said 
it was a blow from which the South would never be able 
to recover; and that the whole South then laid at the 
mercy of Sherman. Weichmann seemed, whilst on the 
stand, to be disposed to give what he believed a truthful 
statement. I am in hopes the above will refresh his 
memory, and he will do me the justice, though late, to 
correct his erroneous testimony. 

To recapitulate — I made use of no such statement as 
reported by the "Washington Correspondent of the 
New York Times," only in the sense and meaning as 
testified to by Dr. George D. Mudd, and as either misun- 
derstood or misrepresented by Colonel Wells and others 
before the Commission. 

I never saw Mrs. Surratt in my life to my knowledge 
previous to the assassination, and then only through her 
veil. I never saw Arnold, O'Laughlin, Atzerodt, Payne, 
alias Powell, or Spangler — or ever heard their names 
mentioned previous to the assassination of the President. 
I never saw or heard of Booth after December 23rd, 
1864, until after the assassination, and then he was in 
disguise. I did not know Booth whilst in my house, 
nor did I know Herold, neither of whom made 
himself known to me. And I further declare they 
did not make known to me their true destination 
before I left the house. They inquired the way to 
many places, and desired particularly to go to the 
Reverend Wilmer's. 

I gave a full description of the two parties (whom I 
represented as suspicious) to Lieutenant Lovett and three 
other officers on the Tuesday after the assassination. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 219 

I gave a description of one horse — the other I never 
took any notice of, and do not know to this day the color 
or appearance. Neither Booth's nor Herold's name was 
mentioned in connection with the assassination, nor 
was there any name mentioned in connection with the 
assassination, nor was there any photograph exhibited 
of any one implicated in the infamous deed. I was 
merely called upon to give a description of the men and 
horses and the places they inquired. The evidence of 
the four detectives — Lovett, Gavacan, Lloyd, and 
Williams — conflicts (unintentionally) on this point; they 
evidently prove and disprove the fact, as they have done 
in every instance affecting my interest, or upon points 
in which my welfare was at issue. Some swore that 
the photograph of Booth was exhibited on Tuesday, 
which was false. I do not advert to the false testimony; 
it is evident to the reader, and bears the impress of foul 
play and persecution somewhere — it may be owing to 
the thirst for the enormous reward offered by the Govern- 
ment, or a false idea for notoriety. Evans and Norton 
evidently swore falsely and perjured themselves. Daniel 
I. Thomas was bought by the detectives — likewise 
the negroes who swore against me. The court must 
certainly have seen that a great deal of the testimony 
was false and incompetent — upon this I charge them 
with injustice, etc. 

Reverend Evans and Norton — I never saw nor heard 
their names in my life. I never knew, nor have I any 
knowledge whatsoever, of John Surratt ever visiting 
Richmond. I had not seen him previous to the twenty-third 
of December, 1864, for more than nine months. He was 
no visitor to my house. 

The detectives, Lovett, Gavacan, Lloyd, and Williams, 
having failed to search my house or to make any in- 



220 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

quiries whether the parties left anything behind on the 
Tuesday after the assassination, I myself did not think 
— consequently did not remind them. A day or two 
after their leaving the boot that was cut from the in- 
jured man's leg by myself was brought to our attention, 
and I resolved on sending it to the military authorities, 
but it escaped my memory, and I was not reminded of 
its presence until the Friday after the assassination, 
when Lieutenant Lovett and the above parties, with a 
squad of cavalry, came again and asked for the razor 
the party shaved with. I was then reminded imme- 
diately of the boot, and without hesitation I told them of 
it and the circumstances. I had never examined the 
inside of the boot leg, consequently knew nothing about 
a name which was there contained. As soon as I handed 
the boot to Lieutenant Lovett, they examined and dis- 
covered the name "J. Wilkes"; they then handed me 
his photograph, and asked whether it bore any resem- 
blance to the party, to which I said I would not be able to 
recognize that as the man (injured), but remarked that 
there was a resemblance about the eyes and hair. Herold's 
likeness was also handed me, and I could not see any 
resemblance, but I had described the horse upon which 
he rode, which, one of the detectives said, answered 
exactly to the one taken from one of the stables in Wash- 
ington. 

From the above facts and circumstances I was enabled 
to form a judgment, which I expressed without hesita- 
tion, and I said that I was convinced that the injured 
man was Booth, the same man who visited my house 
in November, 1864, and purchased a horse from my 
neighbour, George Gardiner. I said this because I thought 
my judgment in the matter was necessary to secure 
pursuit promptly of the assassins. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 221 

In May, 1901, Samuel Cox, Jr., told Mr. Osborn H. 
Oldroyd that in 1877, when Dr. Mudd and he were the 
Democratic candidates for the legislature from Charles 
County, Dr. Mudd often talked privately to him about 
the assassination, and said that he knew Booth when 
he dressed the broken leg, but did not. know of Booth's 
mad deed. Mr. Cox thought Dr. Mudd had been 
aware of the abduction plot, but he was sure the doctor 
had no part in the assassination, nor anything but 
abhorrence for it. ("The Assassination of Abraham 
Lincoln," by Osborn H. Oldroyd, pp. 268, 269.) 



APPENDIX VI 

ROCKVILLE LECTURE OF JOHN H. SURRATT 

Ladies and Gentlemen: Upon entering that door a 
few moments ago the impression on my mind was so 
strong as to vividly recall scenes of three years ago. I 
am not unacquainted with court-room audiences. I 
have stood before them before; true, not in the character 
of a lecturer, but as a prisoner at the bar, arraigned for 
the high crime of murder. In contrasting the two positions 
I must confess I felt more easy as the prisoner at the bar 
than I do as a lecturer. Then I felt confident of success ; 
now I do not. Then I had gentlemen of known ability 
to do all my talking for me; now, unfortunately, I have 
to do it for myself and I feel illy capable of performing 
the task; still I hope you will all judge me kindly. I 
am not here to surprise you by an oratorical effort — not 
at all — but only to tell a simple tale. I feel that some 
explanation — perhaps, indeed, an apology — is due you 
for my appearance here this evening. In presenting 
this lecture before the public I do it in no spirit of self- 
justification. In the trial of sixty-one days I made my 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 223 

defence to the world, and have no need or desire to 
rehearse it; nor do I appear for self-glorification. On 
the contrary, I dislike notoriety, and leave my solitude 
and obscurity unwillingly. Neither is it an itching for 
fame. I stand here through the force of that which has 
obliged many other men to do things quite as distasteful: 
pecuniary necessity, for the supply of which no more 
available channel presented itself. This is a reason 
easily appreciated. So you will take it kindly, I trust, 
as the ground we have to go over together will guarantee 
sufficient interest to repay your kind attention. 

In this, my first lecture, I will speak of my introduc- 
tion to J. Wilkes Booth; his plan, its failure, our final 
separation; my trip from Richmond and thence to Canada, 
then by orders to Elmira, what was done there; the first 
intimation I had of Mr. Lincoln's death; my return to 
Canada and my concealment there ; and my final depart- 
ure for Europe. 

At the breaking out of the war I was a student at St. 
Charles College in Maryland, but did not remain long 
there after that important event. I left in July, 1861, 
and returning home, commenced to take an active part 
in the stirring events of that period. I was not more 
than eighteen years of age, and was mostly engaged in 
sending information regarding the movements of the 



224 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

United States soldiers stationed in Washington and 
elsewhere, and carrying dispatches to Confederate boats 
on the Potomac. We had a regular established line from 
Washington to the Potomac, and being the only un- 
married man on the route, I had most of the hard riding 
to do. I devised various ways to carry the dispatches 
— sometimes in the heel of my boots, sometimes between 
the planks of the buggy. I confess that never in my 
life did I come across a more stupid set of detectives 
than those generally employed by the United States 
Government. They seemed to have no idea whatever 
how to search me. 

In 1864 my family left Maryland and moved to Wash- 
ington, where I took a still more active part in the stirring 
events of that period. It was a fascinating life to me. 
It seemed as if I could not do too much or run too great 
a risk. 

In the fall of 1864 I was introduced to John Wilkes 
Booth, who, I was given to understand, wished to know 
something about the main avenue leading from Washing- 
ton to the Potomac. We met several times, but as he 
seemed to be very reticent with regard to his purposes, 
and very anxious to get all the information out of me he 
could, I refused to tell him anything at all. At last I 
said to him: "It is useless for you, Mr. Booth, to seek 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 225 

any information from me at all; I know who you are and 
what are your intentions." He hesitated some time, 
but finally said he would make known his views to me 
provided I would promise secrecy. I replied: "I will 
do nothing of the kind; you know well I am a Southern 
man. If you cannot trust me, we will separate." He 
then said: "I will confide my plans to you; but before 
doing so I will make known to you the motives that 
actuate me. In the Northern prisons are many thousands 
of our men whom the United States Government refuses 
to exchange. You know as well as I the efforts that 
have been made to bring about the desired exchange. 
Aside from the great suffering they are compelled to 
undergo, we are sadly in want of them as soldiers. We 
cannot spare one man, whereas the United States Gov- 
ernment is willing to let their own soldiers remain in our 
prisons because she has no need of them. I have a propo- 
sition to submit to you which I think, if we can carry out, 
would bring about the desired exchange." 

There was a long and ominous silence which I at 
last was compelled to break by asking: "Well, sir, what is 
your proposition?" He sat quiet for an instant and 
then, before answering me, arose and looked under the 
bed, into the wardrobe, in the doorway and the passage- 
way, and then said: "We will have to be careful; walls 



226 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

have ears." He then drew his chair close to me and in 
a whisper said, "It is to kidnap President Lincoln, and 
carry him off to Richmond." 

"Kidnap President Lincoln!" I said. I confess that I 
stood aghast at the proposition, and looked upon it as a 
foolhardy undertaking. To think of successfully seizing 
Mr. Lincoln in the capital of the United States, sur- 
rounded by thousands of his soldiers, and carrying him 
off to Richmond, looked to me like a foolish idea. I told 
him as much. He went on to tell with what facility he 
could be seized in and about Washington, as, for example, 
in his various rides to and from the Soldiers' Home, his 
summer residence. He entered into minute details of 
the proposed capture, and of the various parts to be per- 
formed by the actors in the performance. I was amazed 
— thunderstruck — and, in fact, I might also say, fright- 
ened at the unparalleled audacity of his scheme. 

After two days' reflection I told him I was willing to 
try it. I believed it practical at that time, though now re- 
gard it as a foolhardy undertaking. I hope you will 
not blame me for going thus far. I honestly thought 
an exchange of prisoners could be brought about could 
we have once obtained possession of Mr. Lincoln's 
person. I now reverse the case: Where is there a young 
man in the North, with one spark of patriotism in his 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 227 

heart, who would not have with enthusiastic ardour joined 
in any undertaking for the capture of Jefferson Davis, 
and brought him to Washington ? There is not one who 
would not have done so! So I was led on by a desire to 
assist the South in gaining her independence. I had no 
hesitation in taking part in anything honourable that 
might tend toward the accomplishment of that object. 
Such a thing as the assassination of Mr. Lincoln I never 
heard spoken by any of the parties — never! Upon one 
occasion, I remember, we had called a meeting in Wash- 
ington for the purpose of discussing matters in general, 
as we had understood that the Government had received 
information that there was a plot of some kind on hand. 
They had even commenced to build a stockade on the 
Navy Yard bridge, gates opening toward the south, as 
though they expected danger from within, and not from 
without. At this meeting I explained the construction 
of the gates, etc., and that the best thing we could do 
would be to throw up the whole project. Every one 
seemed to coincide with my opinion except Booth, who 
sat silent and abstracted. Arising at last, and bringing 
down his fist upon the table, he said: "Well, gentlemen, 
if the worst comes to the worst, I shall know what to do! " 
Some hard words and even threats then passed between 
him and some of the party. Four of us then arose, 



228 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

one saying: "If I understand you to intimate anything 
more than the capture of Mr. Lincoln, I, for one, will 
bid you good-bye." Every one expressed the same 
opinion. We all arose and commenced putting our 
hats on. Booth, perceiving probably that he had gone 
too far, asked pardon, saying that he "had drank too 
much champagne." After some difficulty everything 
was amicably arranged, and we separated at five o'clock 
in the morning. 

Days, weeks, and months passed by without an oppor- 
tunity presenting itself for us to attempt the capture. 
We seldom saw one another, owing to the many rumours 
afloat that a conspiracy of some kind was being con- 
cocted in Washington. We had all arrangements per- 
fected from Washington for the purpose. Boats were 
in readiness to carry us across the river. 

One day we received information that the President 
would visit the Seventh Street Hospital for the purpose 
of being present at an entertainment to be given for the 
benefit of the wounded soldiers. The report only 
reached us about three-quarters of an hour before the 
time appointed, but so perfect was"our communication that 
we were instantly in our saddles on the way to the hospital. 
This was between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. 

It was our intention to seize the carriage, which was 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 229 

drawn by a splendid pair of horses, and to have one of 
our men mount the box and drive direct for southern 
Maryland via Benning's Bridge. We felt confident 
that all the cavalry in the city could never overtake us. 
We were all mounted on swift horses, besides having a 
thorough knowledge of the country, it being determined 
to abandon the carriage after passing the city limits. 
Upon the suddenness of the blow and the celerity of our 
movements we depended for success. By the time the 
alarm could have been given and horses saddled we would 
have been on our way through southern Maryland 
toward the Potomac River. 

To our great disappointment, however, the President 
was not there, but one of the Government officials — Mr. 
Chase, if I mistake not. We did not disturb him, as we 
wanted a bigger chase than he could have afforded us. 
It was certainly a bitter disappointment, but yet I think 
a most fortunate one for us. It was our last attempt. 
We soon after this became convinced that we could not 
remain much longer undiscovered, and that we must 
abandon our enterprise. Accordingly a separation 
finally took place, and I never after saw any of the party 
except one, and that was when I was on my way from 
Richmond to Canada on business of quite a different 
nature — about which presently. 



230 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Such is the story of our abduction plot — rash, perhaps 
foolish, but honourable, I maintain, in its means and ends; 
actuated by such motives as would, under similar cir- 
cumstances, be a sufficient inducement to thousands of 
Southern young men to have embarked in a similar 
enterprise. 

Shortly after our abandonment of the abduction scheme, 
some despatches came to me which I was compelled to see 
through to Richmond. They were foreign ones, and 
, had no reference whatever to this affair. I accordingly 
left home for Richmond, and arrived there safely on the 
Friday evening before the evacuation of that city. On my 
arrival I went to the Spotswood Hotel, where I was told 
that Mr. Benjamin, the then Secretary of War of the 
Confederate States, wanted to see me. I accordingly 
sought his presence. He asked me if I would carry some 
despatches to Canada for him. I replied "Yes." That 
evening he gave me the despatches and $200 in gold with 
which to pay my way to Canada. That was the only 
money I ever received from the Confederate Government 
or any of its agents. It may be well to remark here that 
this scheme of abduction was concocted without the 
knowledge or the assistance of the Confederate Govern- 
ment in any shape or form. Booth and I often consulted 
together as to whether it would not be well to acquaint the 



THE DEATH OP LINCOLN 231 

authorities in Richmond with our plan, as we were sadly 
in want of money, our expenses being very heavy. In fact, 
the question arose among us as to whether, after getting 
Mr. Lincoln, if we succeeded in our plan, the Confederate 
authorities would not surrender us to the United 
States again, because of our doing this thing without their 
knowledge or consent. But we never acquainted them 
with the plan, and they never had anything in the wide 
world to do with it. In fact, we were jealous of our under- 
taking and wanted no outside help. I have not made 
this statement to defend the officers of the Confederate 
Government. They are perfectly able to defend them- 
selves. What I have done myself I am not ashamed to let 
the world know. I left Richmond on Saturday morning 
before the evacuation of that place, and reached Washing- 
ton the following Monday at 4 o'clock p. m., April 3, 1865. 
As soon as I reached the Maryland shore I understood 
that the detectives knew of my trip South and were on the 
lookout for me. I had been South several times before for 
the Secret Service, but had never been caught. At that 
time I was carrying the despatches Mr. Benjamin gave me 
in a book entitled "The Life of John Brown." During 
my trip, and while reading that book I learned to my utter 
amazement that John Brown was a martyr sitting at the 
right hand of God. I succeeded in reaching Washington 



232 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

safely, and in passing up Seventh Street met one of our 
party, who inquired what had become of Booth. I told 
him where I had been; that I was then on my way to 
Canada, and that I had not seen or heard anything of 
Booth since our separation. In view of the fact that 
Richmond had fallen, and that all hopes of the abduction 
of the President had been given up, I advised him to go 
home and go to work. That was the last time I saw any 
of the party. I went to a hotel and stopped over that 
night, as a detective had been to my house inquiring of 
the servant my whereabouts. In the early train next 
morning, Tuesday, April 4, 1865, I left for New York, 
and that was the last time I ever saw Washington until 
brought there by the U. S. Government a captive in irons 
— all reports to the contrary notwithstanding. 

The United States, as you will remember, tried to prove 
my presence in Washington on April 14th, the day 
on which Mr. Lincoln met his death. Upon arriving in 
New York, I called at Booth's house, and was told by 
the servant that he had left that morning suddenly, on the 
ground of going to Boston to fulfil an engagement at the 
theatre. In the evening of the same day I took the cars 
for Montreal, arriving there the next day. I put up at 
the St. Lawrence Hotel, registering myself as "John 
Harrison," such being my two first names. Shortly after- 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 233 

ward I saw General Edward G. Lee, to whom the 
despatches were directed, and delivered them to him. 
Those despatches we tried to introduce as evidence on my 
trial, but his Honour Judge Fisher, ruled them out, despite 
the fact that the Government had tried to prove that they 
had relation to the conspiracy to kill Mr. Lincoln. They 
were only accounts of some money transactions — nothing 
more or less. 

A week or so after my arrival there, General Lee came 
to my room, and told me he had a plan on foot to release 
the Confederate prisoners then in Elmira, N. Y. He 
said he had sent many parties there, but they always got 
frightened and only half executed their orders. He 
asked me if I would go there and take a sketch of the 
prison, find out the number of prisoners, also minor de- 
tails in regard to the number of soldiers on guard, cannon, 
small arms, etc. I readily accepted these new labours, 
owing to the fact that I could not return to Washington 
for fear of the detectives. The news of the evacuation 
of Richmond did not seem to disturb the general much 
in his plan, as he doubtless thought then that the Con- 
federacy wanted men more than ever, no one dreaming 
that it was virtually at an end. I was much amused at 
one expression made use of by an ex-reb with regard 
to the suddenness of its demise: "D — n the thing, it 



234 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

did n't even flicker, but went right out!" In accordance 
with General Lee's order, I went to Elmira, arriving 
there on Wednesday, two days before Mr. Lincoln's 
death, and registered at the Brainard House, as usual, 
as "John Harrison." The following day I went to work, 
and made a complete sketch of the prison and surround- 
ings. About ten o'clock on Friday night I retired, little 
thinking that on that night a blow would be struck 
which would forever blast my hopes, and make me a 
wanderer in a foreign land. I slept the night through, 
and came down the next morning little dreaming of the 
storm then brewing around my head. When I took my 
seat at the table about nine o'clock a. m., a gentleman 
to my left remarked: "Have you heard the news?" 
"No, I've not," I replied. "What is it?" "Why, 
President Lincoln and Secretary Seward have been 
assassinated." 

I really put so little faith in what the man said that I 
made a remark that it was too early in the morning to 
get off such jokes as that. "It 's so," he said, at the same 
time drawing out a paper and showing it to me. Sure 
enough, there I saw an account of what he told me, but 
as no names were mentioned it never occurred to me for 
an instant that it could have been Booth or any of the 
party, for the simple reason that I never had heard any- 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 235 

thing regarding assassination spoken of during my 
intercourse with them. 

I had good reason to believe that there was another 
conspiracy afloat in Washington. In fact we all knew it. 
One evening as I was partially lying down in the reading- 
room of the Metropolitan Hotel, two or three gentlemen 
came in and looked around as if to make sure that no one 
was around. They then commenced to talk about what 
had been done, the best means for the expedition, etc. 
It being about dusk, and no gas lit, and I partially con- 
cealed behind a writing desk, I was an unwilling listener 
to what occurred. I told Booth of this afterward, and 
he said he had heard something to the same effect. It 
only made us all the more eager to carry out our plans 
at an early day for fear some one should get ahead of 
us. We did n't know what they were after, exactly, but 
we were well satisfied that their object was very much 
the same as ours. 

Arising from the table I thought over who the party 
could be, for at that time no names had been telegraphed. 
I was pretty sure it was none of the old party. I ap- 
proached the telegraph office in the main hall of the hotel 
for the purpose of ascertaining if J. Wilkes Booth was 
in New York. I picked up a blank and wrote "John 
Wilkes Booth," giving the number of the house. I hesi- 



236 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

tated a moment, and then tore the paper up, and then 
wrote one "J. W. B.," with directions, which I was led 
to do from the fact that during our whole connection we 
rarely wrote or telegraphed under our proper names, but 
always in such a manner that no one could understand 
but ourselves. One way of Booth's was to send letters 
to me under cover to my quondam friend, Louis J. 
Weichmann. Doubtless you all know who Louis J. 
Weichmann is. They were sent to him because he knew 
of the plot to abduct President Lincoln. I proclaim it 
here and before the world that Louis J. Weichmann was 
a party to the plan to abduct President Lincoln. He had 
been told all about it, and was constantly importuning me 
to let him become an active member. I refused, for the 
simple reason that I told him he could neither ride a 
horse nor shoot a pistol, which was a fact. These were 
two necessary accomplishments for us. My refusal 
nettled him some ; so he went off, as it afterward appeared 
by his testimony, and told some Government clerk that he 
had a vague idea that there was a plan of some kind 
on hand to abduct President Lincoln. This he says 
himself: that he could have spotted every man of the 
party. Why didn't he do it? Booth sometimes was 
rather suspicious of him, and asked if I thought he could 
be trusted. I said, "Certainly he can. Weichmann is 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 237 

a Southern man." And I always believed it until I had 
good reason to believe otherwise, because he had fur- 
nished information for the Confederate Government, 
besides allowing me access to the Government's records 
after office hours. I have very little to say of Louis J. 
Weichmann. But I do pronounce him a base-born 
perjurer, a murderer of the meanest hue! Give me a 
man who can strike his victim dead, but save me from 
a man who, through perjury, will cause the death of an 
innocent person. Double murderer! Hell possesses no 
worse fiend than a character of that kind. Away with 
such a character! I leave him in the pit of infamy 
which he has dug for himself, a prey to the lights of his 
guilty conscience. 

I telegraphed Booth thus: 

"J. W. B., in New York: 

"If you are in New York telegraph me. 

" John Harrison, Elmira, N. Y." 

The operator, after looking over it, said : "Is it J. W. B. ?" 
to which I replied "Yes." He evidently wanted the whole 
name, and had scarcely finished telegraphing when a 
door right near the office, and opening on the street, was 
pushed open, and I heard some one say : " Yes, there are 
three or four brothers of them, Junius Brutus, Edwin, 



238 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

and J. Wilkes Booth." The whole truth flashed on me 
in an instant, and I said to myself: "My God! What 
have I done?" The despatch was still lying before me, 
and I reached over and took it up for the purpose of 
destroying it, but the operator stretched forth his hand 
and said: "We must file all telegrams." My first impulse 
was to tear it up, but I pitched it back and walked off. 
The town was in the greatest uproar, flags at half-mast, 
bells tolling, etc., etc. Still I did not think that I was in 
danger, and determined to go immediately to Baltimore 
to find out the particulars of the tragedy. But here I 
wish to say a few words concerning the register of the 
Brainard House. When my counsel, by my own direc- 
tion, went to seek that register, it could not be found. 
Our inability to produce it on the trial naturally cast a 
suspicion over our alibi. For weeks, months, did we 
seek to find its whereabouts, but to no purpose. Every 
man who was connected with the hotel was hunted up 
and questioned. Every register of the hotel before and 
after the one which ought to contain my name was to 
be found, but the most important one of all was gone. 
Now, the question is, what became of that register ? The 
United States Government, by one of its witnesses, 
Doctor McMillan, knew in November, 1865, that I was 
in Elmira at the time of the assassination. They knew 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 239 

it, and they naturally traced me there to find out what I 
was doing. That some of the Government emissaries 
abstracted that register I firmly believe, or perhaps it is 
stored away in some of the other Government vaults, under 
charge of some judge high in position; but this is only a 
surmise of mine. But the circumstance involves a mys- 
tery of villainy which the All-Seeing God will yet bring 
to light. The dispatch I sent to Booth from Elmira it 
was also impossible to find. We had the operator at 
Washington during my trial, but he said the original was 
gone, though he had a copy of it. In telegraph offices 
they are compelled to keep all despatches filed. Of 
course we could not offer this copy in evidence, because 
the original alone would be accepted, and that had been 
made away with. So sure was the Government that 
they had destroyed all evidence of my sojourn in Elmira 
that, in getting me to Washington in time for Mr. Lin- 
coln's death, they brought me by way of New York City; 
but so completely were they foiled in this that in their 
rebutting testimony they saw the absolute necessity of 
having me go by way of Elmira, and they changed their 
tactics accordingly. That was enough to damn my case 
in any man's mind. This is a strange fact, but neverthe- 
less true, that the Government, having in its possession 
this hotel register as well as my despatch to Booth, and 



240 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

knowing, moreover, by one of its witnesses, that I was 
in Elmira, yet tried to prove that I was in Washington 
on the night of Mr. Lincoln's death, " giving orders and 
commanding in general," as they were pleased to say. 
The gentlemen in Elmira, by whom I proved my alibi, 
were men of the highest standing and integrity whose 
testimony the United States Government could not and 
dare not attempt to impeach. I left Elmira with 
the intention of going to Baltimore. I really did not 
comprehend at that time the danger I was in. As there 
was no train going south that evening, I concluded to go 
to Canandaigua and from there to Baltimore by way of 
Elmira and New York. Upon arriving at Canandaigua 
on Saturday evening I learned to my utter disappoint- 
ment that no train left until the Monday following, so 
I took a room at the Webster House, registering myself 
as "John Harrison." The next day I went to church, 
I remember, it being Easter Sunday. I can here safely 
say that the United States Government had not the 
remotest idea that I stopped anywhere after I left Elmira. 
They thought, when I left there, I went straight through 
to Canada. It was a very fortunate thing for me that I 
could not leave Canandaigua. Now, mark, ladies and 
gentlemen, if you please: My name was signed midway 
of the hotel register, with six other parties before and 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 241 

after. There was no doubt as to the genuineness of 
signature, because the very experts brought by the United 
States to swear to my signature in other instances, swore 
also that that was my handwriting. After all this, the 
register was ruled out by Judge Fisher, because he was 
well aware if he admitted it my trial was at an end. I 
could not be in two places at once, though they tried to 
make me so. Listen to his reason for so ruling! "The 
prisoner might have stepped down from Canada to 
Canandaigua during his concealment and signed his 
name there for the purpose of protecting himself in the 
future." It was a likely idea that the proprietor of a 
hotel would leave a blank line in the register for my 
especial benefit! Need I say that the ruling was a most 
infamous one, and ought to damn the judge who so 
ruled as a villain in the minds of every honest and 
upright man. Had Judge Fisher been one of the lawyers 
for the prosecution, he could not have worked harder 
against me than he did. But, thanks to him, he did me 
more good than harm. His unprincipled and vindictive 
character was too apparent to every one in the court- 
room. I could not help smiling at the time to think of 
the great shrewdness and foresight he accorded me by 
that decision. At times, really, during my trial, I could 
scarce recognize any vestige of my former self. Some- 



242 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

times I would ask myself: "Am I the same individual? 
Am I really the same John H. Surratt?" When that 
register was produced in court, the Hon. Judge Pierre- 
pont, the leading counsel for the United States, became 
exceedingly nervous, especially when Mr. Bradley re- 
fused to show it to him, and he tore up several pieces of 
paper in his trembling fingers. 

He evidently saw what a pitiful case he had, and how he 
had been made the dupe of his precious, worthy friend, 
Edwin M. Stanton. At the time of my trial the proprietor 
of the Webster House in Canandaigua could not find the 
cash-register of the hotel, in which there should have been 
an entry in favour of "John Harrison" for so much cash. 
When he returned to Canandaigua, my trial being then 
ended, he wrote to Mr. Bradley, and sent it to him. It 
was then too late. My trial was over. If we had had that 
cash-book at the time of my trial it would have proved 
beyond a doubt that I was in Canandaigua, and not in 
Washington city. 

On Monday, when I was leaving Canandaigua, I bought 
some New York papers. In looking over them my eye 
lit on the following paragraph, which I have never forgot, 
and don't think I ever will. It runs thus: "The Assassin 
of Secretary Seward is said to be John H. Surratt, a notori- 
ous secessionist of southern Maryland. His name, with 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 243 

that of John Wilkes Booth, will forever lead the infamous 
roll of assassins." I could scarcely believe my senses. 
I gazed upon my name, the letters of which seemed some- 
times to grow as large as mountains and then to dwindle 
away to nothing. So much for my former connection with 
him, I thought. After fully realizing the state of the case, 
I concluded to change my course, and go direct to Canada. 
I leftCanandaigua on Monday at 12 m., going to Albany, 
arriving there on Tuesday morning in time for breakfast. 
When I stepped on the platform at the depot at St. Albans, 
I noticed that one of the detectives scanned every one, head 
and foot, myself as well as the rest. Before leaving Mon- 
treal for Elmira I provided myself with an Oxford-cut 
jacket and round-top hat peculiar to Canada at that time. 
I knew my trip to Elmira would be a dangerous one, and 
I wished to pass myself off as a Canadian, and I su • 
ceeded in doing so, as was proved by my witnesses in 
Elmira. I believe that costume guarded me safely 
through St. Albans. I went in with others and moved 
around, with the detectives standing there most of the 
time looking at us. Of course I was obliged to talk as 
loud as anybody about the late tragedy. After having 
a hearty meal I lighted a cigar and walked up town. One 
of the detectives approached me, stared me directly in the 
face, and I looked him quietly back. In a few moments 



244 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

I was speeding on my way to Montreal, where I arrived at 
two o'clock in the afternoon, going again to the St. Lawrence 
Hotel. Soon after I called on a friend, to whom I 
explained my former connection with Booth, and told him 
I was afraid the United States Government would suspect 
me of complicity in the assassination. He advised me to 
make myself scarce. 

I immediately went to the hotel, got my things, and 
repaired to the room of a friend. When my friend's 
tea-time came I would not go to the table with him, but 
remained in the room. The ladies wanted to know why 
he did not bring his friend to tea with him. He replied 
that I did not want any. One of the ladies replied: "I 
expect you have got Booth in there." "Perhaps so," 
he answered, laughingly. That was rather close guessing. 
At nightfall I went to the house of one who afterward 
proved to be a most devoted friend. There I remained 
until the evening of the next day, when I was driven out 
in a carriage with two gentlemen, strangers to me. One 
day I walked out and saw Weichmann on the lookout for 
me. He had little idea that I was so near. One night 
about eleven o'clock, my friend, in whose house I was, came 
to me and said, in a smiling way: "The detectives have 
offered me twenty thousand dollars if I will tell them where 
you are." "Very well," said I, "give me one-half and let 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 245 

them know." They suspected this gentleman of protect- 
ing me and they had really made him the offer. One day, 
about twelve o'clock, I was told that they were going to 
search the house, and that I must leave immediately, which 
I did. They searched it before morning. This gentleman 
was a poor man, with a large family, and yet money could 
not buy him. I remained with this gentleman until I 
left Montreal, within a week or so afterward. The 
detectives were now hunting me very closely, and would 
have doubtless succeeded in capturing me, had it not been 
for a blunder on the part of my friend Weichmann. He 
had, it appears, started the detectives on the wrong track 
by telling them that I had left the house of Mr. Porter- 
field in company with some others and was going north to 
Montreal. Soon that section was swarming with detec- 
tives. I was not with the party, but about the same time 
I, too, left Montreal in a hack, going some eight or more 
miles down the St.Lawrence River, crossing that stream in 
a small canoe. I was attired as a huntsman. At three 
o'clock Wednesday morning we arrived at our destination 
a small town lying south of Montreal. We entered the 
village quietly, hoping that no one would see us. 

It has been asserted over and over again, for the purpose 
of damning me in the estimation of every honest man, that 
I deserted her who gave me birth in the darkest hour of 



246 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

her need. Truly would I have merited the execration of 
every man had such been the case. But such was not the 
case. When I left Montreal there was no cause for 
uneasiness on my part, and upon my arrival in the country 
I wrote to my friends to keep me posted in regard to the 
approaching trial and to send me the papers regularly. 
I received letters from them frequently, in all of which 
they assured me there was no cause for anxiety; that it 
was only a matter of time, and it would all be well. After 
a while the papers did not come so regularly, but those that 
did come spoke very encouragingly. Afterward when 
they came sentences were mutilated with ink and pen. 
I protested against such action, and for some time I received 
no papers at all. I became very uneasy, and wrote for 
publication an article signed by myself, which I sent to 
Montreal to be forwarded for publication in the New York 
World. It is needless to say it never went. Things 
continued in this way for some time, until I could stand the 
suspense no longer. I determined to send a messenger 
to Washington for that purpose, and secured the services 
of an intelligent, educated gentleman. I started him off 
immediately, I paying all the expenses. I gave him a letter 
to a friend of mine in Washington, with instructions to say 
to him to put himself in communication with the counsel 
for defence, and to make a correct report to me as to how 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 247 

the case stood — if there was any danger, and also to com- 
municate with me if my presence was necessary, and inform 
me without delay, with an urgent request that he would 
see and inquire for himself how matters stood. He left 
me, and God alone knows the suspense and anxiety of 
my mind during the days of his absence. I imagined and 
thought all kinds of things, yet I was powerless to act. At 
last he returned, and so bright and cheerful was his counte- 
nance that I confess one-half of my fears were dispelled. 
He represented everything as progressing well, and brought 
me this message from the gentleman in Washington to 
whom I had sent him: 

"Be under no apprehension as to any serious conse- 
quences. Remain perfectly quiet, as any action on your 
part would only tend to make matters worse. If you can 
be of any service to us we will let you know; but keep 
quiet." 

These were the instructions I received from my friend 
in Washington, in whom I felt the utmost reliance, and 
who, I thought, would never deceive. He also sent me 
copies of the National Intelligencer, containing evidence 
for the defence. I certainly felt greatly relieved, though 
not entirely satisfied. This news reached me some time 
in the latter part of June, just before the party of gentlemen 
of whom I have spoken had arrived. They, too, assured 



248 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

me there was no cause for fear. What else could I do but 
accept these unwavering assurances ? Even had I thought 
otherwise, I could not have taken action resulting in good. 

Just on the eve of my departure to join a party of gentle- 
men on a hunting excursion, while I was waiting at the 
hotel for the train, the proprietor handed me a paper 
and said: "Read that about the conspirators." 

Little did the man know who I was, or how closely that 
paragraph bore upon me or mine. That paper informed 
me that on a day which was then present, and at an hour 
which then had come and gone, the most hellish of deeds 
was to be enacted. It had been determined upon and 
carried out, even before I had intimation that there was 
any danger. It would be foolish for me to attempt to 
describe my feelings. After gazing at the paper for some 
time I dropped it on the floor, turning on my heel, and 
went directly to the house where I had been stopping 
before. When I entered the room I found my friend 
sitting there. As soon as he saw me he turned deadly 
pale, but never uttered a word. I said: "You doubtless 
thought you were acting a friend — the part of a friend — 
toward me, but you have deceived me. I forgive you, 
but I can never forget it." 

"We all thought it for the best," he commenced to say, 
but I did not stay to hear more. I went to my room, 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 249 

remained there until dark, and then signified my intention 
to leave the place immediately. I felt reckless as to what 
should become of me. 

After visiting Quebec and other places, with a reward of 
$25,000 hanging over my head, I did not think it safe to 
remain there, and so I concluded to seek an asylum in 
foreign lands. I had nothing now to bind me to this 
country save an only sister, and I knew she would never 
want for kind friends or a good home. For myself, it 
mattered little where I went, so I could roam once more a 
free man. I then went on a venture, and now, ladies and 
gentlemen, I go forth again on a venture. Gladly would 
I have remained hidden among the multitude, but the 
stern necessities arising from the blasting of my earthly 
prospects forced me to leave my solitude and to stand again 
before the public gaze as the historian of my own life. 
One mitigation to this distasteful ness in this my first 
attempt, however, is the kindness with which I have been 
received and the patience with which I have been listened 
to, for which I return you, ladies and gentlemen, my 
sincere and heartfelt thanks. 



APPENDIX VII 

THE POSSIBILITY OF CAPTURE 

Mr. Robert W. McBride, now of Indianapolis, was 
a Corporal of the" Union Light Guard," or "Seventh 
Independent Squadron of Ohio Cavalry," 108 men strong, 
which served as Lincoln's cavalry escort and guard from 
December, 1863, until his death. A company of Pennsyl- 
vania infantry shared the duty of guarding the White 
House; it was camped in the grounds just south of the 
White House, and two of its men were always on duty 
at the front door of the mansion. The cavalry were 
quartered in what is now known as the White Lot, but 
which was then known as the Treasury Park. "In 
those days," says Mr. McBride, in an address delivered 
before the Century Club of Indianapolis, and published 
in a pamphlet, October, 1908, "the White House grounds 
proper only extended south to a line running east and 
west from the south end of the Treasury Building to 
Seventeenth Street. They were bounded on the south 
by a stone wall three or four feet in height, the top of 
the wall being on a level with the White House grounds. 

250 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 251 

South of that, and extending to the old canal, which ran 
immediately north of the then unfinished Washington 
Monument, was the Treasury Park, a great common with 
a few small scattering trees and a half-mile race track. 
The barracks were south of the Treasury Department 
on the west side of Fifteenth Street, facing D and E 
Streets. Their horses were stabled on the grounds now 
occupied by Albaugh's Opera House, and were picketed 
and groomed on Fifteenth Street. 

"To those familiar with the city of Washington during 
the Civil War," says Mr. McBride, "it was not surprising 
that Lincoln was assassinated. The surprising thing 
was that it was so long delayed. The city was filled 
with Southern sympathizers, and could easily be entered 
by men coming from beyond the rebel lines. The feeling 
against Mr. Lincoln as the chosen leader of those battling 
for the maintenance of the Union was of course intensely 
bitter. Even in the North he was constantly abused and 
vilified, characterized as a tyrant and monster, while 
articles appeared daily in many of the newspapers, the 
tendency of which was to incite to his murder." Even 
with the cavalry and infantry guard, "the inadequacy of 
the measures taken for Mr. Lincoln's protection will," 
says Mr. McBride, "be understood in a measure when 
I describe how I first saw him. 



252 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

"It was after midnight of a January night in 1864. 
The approaches to the White House and the great portico 
on its front were lighted by flickering gas jets. The two 
great iron gates which guarded the driveways from 
Pennsylvania Avenue were open, but on each side of 
each gate was a mounted cavalryman. The detail from 
the Union Light Guard, dismounted and lounging 
against the stone supports of the portico, was the cavalry 
corporal of the guard, his horse being picketed in the 
rear of the house. (On that particular night I happened 
to be the corporal of the guard.) 

"The two infantrymen were pacing their beats. From 
the end of the beat of the sentinel on the east side, a walk 
ran to the Treasury Department, and just north of this 
path stood the White House stables, inside a square- 
trimmed boxwood hedge probably two and one-half or 
three feet high. From the end of the beat of the sentinel 
on the west, a path paved with brick ran westward to 
the old War Department, a dingy-looking old brick build- 
ing of the dry-goods-box style of architecture, occupying 
a part of the north end of the ground now covered by the 
magnificent State, War, and Navy Building. South 
of it, fronting on Seventeenth Street, and separated from 
the War Department a short distance, was another old- 
time brick structure, resembling it in architectural ugliness, 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 253 

and occupied by the Navy Department. The space 
between the White House and War Department con- 
tained a number of great forest trees, making a beautiful 
little park in daylight; but at night, lighted only by the 
wavering beams of a solitary gas-jet, it was a place of 
shadows and gloom. The path to the War Department 
ran along the south end of this little park, under the 
shadow of the trees. Just south of the park was a brick 
wall, probably five or six feet in height, easily scaled, 
enclosing what was then called the WTiite House Gardens. 
Lights shone in only a few of the windows of the White 
House. 

"The front door opened, and a tall, rather slender, 
angular looking man came out alone. He wore a long, 
black, frock coat, and a silk hat of the peculiar narrow, 
high, straight style then in vogue. The hat had apparently 
either seen its best days or had been badly cared for, as 
it had lost its shine, and the nap was standing on end 
in many patches. The long coat and the high hat made 
him seem taller and more slender, even, than he really was. 

"Closing the door, he clasped his hands behind his 
back, and with head bent forward, walked slowly toward 
the front of the portico. . . . The President came 
slowly forward until he reached the steps, and there he 
stopped. For several minutes he stood, seemingly in 



254 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

deep thought, and apparently giving no heed to his sur- 
roundings. One of the gas-lights shone full upon him. 
He looked careworn and weary. . . He came down the 
steps and without appearing to notice, gravely lifted his 
hat in recognition of the salute given, and turned toward 
the War Department. With similar gravity he acknowl- 
edged the salute of the infantryman as he passed him. 
While the infantryman at once resumed his beat, both he 
and the cavalryman anxiously watched the tall figure as 
it passed into the shadows of the great trees, and I know 
of one of them whose anxiety was only relieved when Mr. 
Lincoln was seen to enter the War Department building. 
In about half an hour he came back, still alone. This, 
while the first, was only one of many similar occurrences; 
for, as I then learned, it was his frequent and almost 
nightly practice thus to visit the War Department before 
going to bed, that he might have the latest news from the 
front. It was also his daily practice to make an early 
morning visit to the department. I never saw him 
attended at any of these times. He always went and 
came alone. I think, however, that late in the fall of 1864 
a member of the police force in plain clothes attended him 
whenever he left the White House. 

"From the description I have given of the surroundings 
it can be seen how easy it would have been for an assassin 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 255 

to have killed him while he was on one of these solitary 
visits to the War Department, and how little actual pro- 
tection was given him by the guards as they were posted." 
Speaking of the plot to seize Mr. Lincoln in the park some 
dark night, lift him over the brick wall, and hurry him 
across the Treasury Park to the Van Ness house, 
Mr. McBride gives it as his conviction that "the 
plan was practicable, and I never understood why it 
was abandoned." 



APPENDIX VIII 

JOHN Y. BEALL 

John Y. Beall, who was detailed to assist in the cap- 
ture of Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay, and the release 
of the Confederate prisoners thereon, in the fall of 1864, 
and who, to assist the enterprise, seized the merchant 
steamer Philo Parsons, plying between Detroit and 
Sandusky — for which he was arrested, tried by a mili- 
tary commission, and hanged on Governor's Island, 
February 24, 1865 — was said to be a cousin of John 
Wilkes Booth. Beall was a fine young officer, much 
like Richmond P. Hobson in personality, and great 
efforts were made to save his life. "President Lincoln 
received fervent appeals, but beyond suggesting to 
General Dix a reprieve of six days, he did nothing." 
(Rhodes, vol. v., p. 332.) In an editorial in the Chris- 
tian Observer, Louisville, Ky., for October 13, 1904, the 
statement is made that Lincoln promised Booth Beall 
should not be put to death, but Seward intervened. (See 
Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. xxxii., p. 99.) 



256 



APPENDIX IX 

Lincoln's last journey 

On the sail up from City Point, April 9th — Palm Sun. 
day and Lincoln's last Sunday on earth — the President 
read aloud, as he was fond of doing, from one of Shake- 
speare's tragedies. His selection was from Macbeth, 
and he read with special feeling the lines: 

Duncan is in his grave; 
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. 
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 
Can touch him further. 

As the River Queen drew near to Washington, Mrs. 

Lincoln, looking at the capital, said: "The hateful city; 

it is full of our enemies!" To which Lincoln replied, not 

so much as if he believed it but as if he wanted to believe 

it, "That is not so — now." 

This was Lincoln's last journey, unless we count the 
journeying of his body during the many days of his funeral. 
For an account of his burial and the subsequent history 
of his body, the reader is referred to the following books 

257 



258 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

by Mr. J. C. Power, of Springfield: "Abraham Lincoln, 
His Life, Public Service, Death and Great Funeral 
Cortege, With a History and Description of the National 
Lincoln Monument," privately published in Springfield 
in 1872; and "An Account of the Attempt to Steal the 
Body of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United 
States, including a History of the Lincoln Guard of 
Honour," published by H. W. Rokker, Springfield, 1890. 



APPENDIX X 

Lincoln's last speech 

On Monday, April 10th, a crowd gathered in front of 
the War Department and gave vent to its feelings of joy 
at the news from Appomattox. "Men yelled, shouted, 
screamed, cheered, laughed, and wept. No one thought 
of doing business. A band appeared from somewhere 
and commenced playing patriotic airs. In response to 
calls, Secretary Stanton, Vice-President Johnson, and 
others made speeches. That of Andrew Johnson was 
bitter and vindictive. One expression I can never forget. 
It was: 'And what shall be done with the leaders of the 
rebel host ? I know what I would do if I were President. 
I would arrest them as traitors, I would try them as traitors, 
and, by the Eternal, I would hang them as traitors! ' His 
manner and his language impressed me the more because 
of its contrast with the temperate manner and language 
of President Lincoln. 

"Some one in the crowd shouted : 'To the White House! ' 
The crowd surged in that direction, and began calling 
for the President. He appeared at an upper window, 

259 



260 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

just west of the portico. His appearance was the signal 
for cheering that continued for many minutes, with shouts 
of 'Speech! Speech!' He raised his hand, and the 
crowd stilled. 

"He said: 'My friends, you want a speech, but I cannot 
make one at this time. Undue importance might be given 
to what I should say. I must take time to think. If you 
will come here to-morrow evening I will have something 
to say to you. There is one thing I will do, however. 
You have a band with you. There is one piece of music 
I have always liked. Heretofore it has not seemed the 
proper thing to use it in the North; but now, by virtue 
of my prerogative as President and Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army and Navy, I declare it contraband of war and 
our lawful prize. I ask the band to play "Dixie." ' Again 
the crowd went wild, and for probably the first time the 
tune of 'Dixie' was greeted with cheers from Union 
throats." ("Lincoln's Body-Guard," by Robert W. 
McBride, Indianapolis, 1908.) 

Tom Pendel remembers attending to the illuminating 
of the White House front for the assemblage of Tuesday 
evening. It was accomplished by candle only, and the 
doorkeeper remembers putting out candles nailed to 
long strips of wood, and going the rounds to light them 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 261 

shortly before the President was due on a balcony to 
make his promised speech. On these rounds, Pendel 
recalls, he was accompanied by the indefatigable little 
Tad. (" Thirty-six Years in the White House," by Tom 
Pendel; Neale, Washington, 1900, p. 33.) 

On that evening, after dinner, Lincoln entered the Green 
Drawing-Room, where several White House dinner 
guests were assembled, and laid a roll of manuscript on 
the table. Those present looked surprised. "I know 
what you are thinking about," said the President, smiling. 
"You think it is mighty queer that an old stump speaker 
like myself should not be able to address a crowd like this 
outside without a written speech. But you must remem- 
ber I am, in a certain way, talking to the country and have 
to be mighty careful. Now, the last time I made an off- 
hand speech, in answer to a serenade, I used the phrase, 
as applied to the rebels, ' turned tail and ran.' Some 
very nice Boston folks, I am grieved to hear, were very 
much outraged by that phrase, which they thought 
improper. So I resolved to make no more impromptu 
speeches." Later, says Mr. Noah Brooks, who relates this 
incident in his "Lincoln and the Downfall of Slavery," 
(Putnam's, New York, 1899, p. 452,) Mr. Lincoln admitted 
that it was Charles Sumner who was shocked. 



APPENDIX XI 

Lincoln's forebodings of a tragic death 

Lincoln's forebodings of a tragic death date back to 
the fall of '60, just after his first election to the Presidency. 
He himself described it as follows: "The news had been 
coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a 
great 'hurrah boys!' so that I was well tired out and 
went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my 
chamber. Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a 
swinging glass upon it; and in looking in that glass I 
saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I 
noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip 
of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of 
the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and 
got up and looked in the glass; but the illusion vanished. 
On lying down again I saw it a second time, plainer, if 
possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the 
faces was a little paler — say five shades — than the other. 
I got up, and the thing melted away; and I went off, and 
in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it — nearly, 
but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, 

262 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 263 

and give me a little pang, as though something uncom- 
fortable had happened. When I went home, I told my 
wife about it; and a few days after tried the experiment 
again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; 
but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after 
that, though I once tried very industriously to show it 
to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She 
thought it was 'a sign' that I was to be elected to a second 
term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces 
was an omen that I should not see life through the last 
term.~( " Life of Abraham Lincoln from His Birth to His 
Inauguration as President," by Ward Hill Lamon, pub- 
lished by R. Osgood & Co., Boston, 1872, pp., 76, 477.) 
In January, 1860, when Lincoln was facing the prospect 
of trying to save the Union after the Union was disrupted 
— after South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, 
Georgia, and Louisiana had passed ordinances of seces- 
sion — he was visited by his dear friend, Judge Gillespie, 
and the two men sat in the little frame cottage at Spring- 
field, which Lincoln was soon to leave for the White 
House and its weight of woe, talking far into the night 
about the possibility of averting war. Lincoln feared it 
could not be done without such compromise as he was 
sworn not to make. "I see the duty devolving upon 
me," he told his friend, with an indescribable sadness 



264 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Judge Gillespie never forgot. "I have read upon my 
knees the story of Gethsemane, where the Son of God 
prayed in vain that the cup of bitterness might pass from 
him. I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and my 
cup of bitterness is full and overflowing." 

"I told him," said Judge Gillespie, "that as Christ's 
prayer was not answered, and his crucifixion had redeemed 
the world, so the sacrifice demanded of him might be a 
great beneficence. Little did I then think how prophetic 
my words were to be, what a great sacrifice he was to 
make." ("Life of Lincoln," by Ida M. Tarbell, vol. ii, 
p. 200.) 

Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's intimate friend, says 
(" Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," by Ward Hill 
Lamon, edited by Dorothy Lamon, A. C. McClurg and 
Company, Chicago, 1895, pp. 115-16) that a few days 
before Lincoln's assassination he told Lamon, Mrs. 
Lincoln, and one or two others present, of a dream he 
had, in which he heard "pitiful sobbing." In his dream, 
Lincoln said, he went from room to room of the White 
House and "no living person was in sight, but the same 
mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along 
. . . . until I arrived at the East Room, which I 
entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before 
me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 265 

in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers 
who were acting as guards, and there was a throng of 
people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose 
face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is 
dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the 
soldiers. 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was 
killed by an assassin!' Then came a loud burst of grief 
from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I 
slept no more that night; and although it was only a 
dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since." 
Lamon said that he wrote this down "immediately" 
after hearing Lincoln tell it. And if it sounds too incred- 
ible, we have to remember what a mystic Lincoln was, 
what a "dreamer of dreams." Assassination was con- 
stantly on his mind, not only because he himself really 
believed it would come to him, but because precaution 
against it was forever being dinned into his ears by his 
advisers. There was nothing remarkable in his dream- 
ing the dream. It is only remarkable that it happened 
to come true. 



APPENDIX XII 

LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO MESSENGER 

Chaplain Edward D. Neill was appointed, early in 
'64, to read and dispose of all letters addressed to Mr. Lin- 
coln, and was, consequently, often in close relation to the 
President. He says that on Friday afternoon, April 14, 
'65, between three and four o'clock, Vice-President John- 
son was at the White House, and evidently was urging 
upon Lincoln some vengeful action against the South, 
to which Lincoln made a gentle but firm refusal. Johnson 
retorted that Lincoln was too easy on the rebels, easier 
than he (Johnson) would be. This was overheard by 
Slade, a coloured messenger of the White House, who 
told Johnson he wished the day might come when he 
could be President and punish the rebels as they deserved. 
That night, when he heard of the assassination of Lincoln, 
Slade was overcome with grief, and could hardly be made 
to believe that his wish was in no way responsible for 
Johnson's speedy coming to the Presidency. (" Glimpses 
of the Nation's Struggle," papers read before the Minne- 
sota Commandery of the Loyal Legion and published by the 
St. Paul Book and Stationery Company, 1887, pp. 29-55.) 

266 



APPENDIX XIII 

DANA AND THOMPSON 

During the afternoon of Friday, April 14th, there 
came to Charles A. Dana at the War Office a telegram 
from the provost-marshal of Portland, Me., saying: 
"I have positive information that Jacob Thompson will 
pass through Portland to-night, in order to take a 
steamer for England. What are your orders ? " (Thomp- 
son, of Mississippi, had been Buchanan's Secretary of 
the Interior, and was the leader of the "Canada Cabinet" 
of the Confederacy.) Dana took the telegram to Stanton, 
who promptly said: "Arrest him." Then: "Go over 
and see the President." Dana found no one in the 
President's office, it being after hours, and was turning 
to go when Mr. Lincoln called to him from a little side 
room where he was washing his hands. Dana told the 
President about Thompson and asked what should be 
done. "When you have got an elephant by the hind 
leg," said Lincoln, "and he is trying to run away, it is 
best to let him run." Dana returned to the War Office 
and repeated to Stanton the President's judgment. "Oh, 

2«7 



268 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

stuff!" said Stanton. Dana was at the Peterson House 
that night, taking orders from his chief, until 3 a. m., 
when Stanton told him: "That's enough — you may go 
home." At 8 a. m. Colonel Pelouze, of the Adjutant- 
General's office, rapped on a lower window of Dana's 
house and said: "The President is dead, and Mr. Stanton 
directs you to arrest Jacob Thompson." ("Recollections 
of Charles A. Dana," pp. 274, 276.) 



APPENDIX XIV 

MR. GEORGE ASHMUN 

Mr. George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, was an old 
fellow-congressman of Lincoln's on the Whig side of the 
House. On Tuesday, June 16, 1860, the day the Repub- 
lican National Convention met in Chicago, Mr. 
Ashmun was elected chairman of the convention. On 
Saturday, the second day after Lincoln's nomination, 
Mr. Ashmun went down to Springfield to make to Mr. 
Lincoln the official announcement of his nomination. 
On April 14th, 1861 — Sunday evening — Mr. Ashmun 
called upon the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas and persuaded 
him to go to the White House and assure Lincoln that the 
Democratic party was one with the Republican party in 
its attitude toward Sumter's fall, the news of which had 
reached Washington late that day. Mr. Ashmun's last call 
on Lincoln was exactly four years later than the memo- 
rable visit which established peace between Lincoln and 
the "Little Giant." The "friend" to be admitted with 
Mr. Ashmun at 9 a. m. was Judge C. P. Daly, of New 
York. ("Life of Stephen A. Douglas," by Allen Johnson, 
pp. 475, 478. " Life of Lincoln," by J. G. Holland, p. 301.) 

269 



APPENDIX XV 

"OUR AMERICAN COUSIN " 

Forty years ago he was a poorly informed playgoer 
who was not fairly conversant with the history of that 
play which Lincoln witnessed the night of his assassination. 
But to most readers of this generation it means little or 
nothing that Good Friday night, April 14, 1865, was 
nearly the one thousandth performance of Miss Laura 
Keene as Florence Trenchard in " Our American Cousin," 
and the occasion of a benefit to her. And yet, quite 
apart from its connection with the tragedy of that night, 
Tom Taylor's play has a history of surpassing interest 
and variety. In brief, it is somewhat as follows : 

During the years 1850-51, when the World's Fair in 
London was drawing throngs of visitors to the Crystal 
Palace, no nation was more strongly represented in the 
exhibits and among the sightseers than the United States. 
"Yankees " were the rage in London, and Yankee products 
took precedence of all others. As one American news- 
paper writer said, in describing the Yankee mania: 

"Hobbs locks were placed on the doors of the Lord 

270 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 271 

Chamberlain's offices; Colt's revolvers were in the 
holsters of every British cavalry officer; Connecticut 
baby-jumpers were in the royal nursery; and Massa- 
chusetts patent back-acting, self-adjusting, rotary-motion, 
open-and-shut mouse-traps were the terror of even aristo- 
cratic rats. Lord John Russell 'guessed' and 'calculated' 
on the Papal Aggression Bill; Palmerston and Disraeli 
'whittled,' one on, the other around, the Woolsack; and 
through the columns of the elegantly worded Court 
Circular we learned that at a particular fraction of an 
hour, on a particular day of the week, Her Most Gracious 
Majesty Queen Victoria, aided by the Royal Consort, 
His Highness Prince Albert, together with the whole 
royal family, indulged in three half-pints of 'peanuts' and 
four and two-sixteenths of our genuine 'pumpkin-pies,' 
while Cardinal Wiseman and the Bishop of London 
were seen playing 'poker' over two stiff 'Bourbon whisky- 
slings.' " 

In those days the versatile Tom Taylor was a young 
barrister who had recently emancipated himself from his 
professorship of English at University College, London, 
and was just beginning to establish for himself that 
position as dramatic critic and adapter, humourist and 
all-round journalist, that led him, more than twenty years 
later, to the editorship of Punch. Taylor saw the humor- 



272 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

ous side of the Yankee craze, and wrote a play about it 
which he called "Our American Cousin." The leading 
character, Asa Trenchard, was virtually written to fit 
a Yankee comedian named Josiah Silsby, then playing 
in London, and when the play was sold by Taylor to Mr. 
Ben Webster, lessee of the Adelphi, for eighty pounds, it 
was with the distinct understanding that Silsby was to 
be featured in it. 

But before an opportunity to put the play on presented 
itself, the Yankee mania rapidly declined, and Mr. 
Webster, instead of producing "Our American Cousin," 
made a present of the piece to Silsby, who, on re-reading 
it, decided that it was ineffective and laid it aside. Some 
years later, in California, he found himself in need of a 
play, and rehearsed the Taylor comedy; but it was 
again deemed unlikely to please, and he did not put it on. 

It came to the ears of Taylor, in 1858, that Silsby was 
dead, and also that he had never used the "American 
Cousin" play; and having a copy of it among his manu- 
scripts, Taylor put it in the hands of his friend, John 
Chandler Bancroft Davis, secretary of the United States 
Legation in London. Mr. Davis, on arriving in New 
York, took the play first to Lester Wallack. That 
admirable manager saw in it no possibilities for his com- 
pany, but advised Mr. Davis to take it to Miss Laura 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 273 

Ke„ene, then managing a theatre of her own on the east 
side of Broadway, between Bleecker and Houston Streets, 
and to say to her that there was a part in the play that 
might be excellently adapted to Mr. Jefferson, of her 
company. 

Mr. Joseph Jefferson, although of distinguished stage 
ancestry and a personal stage experience covering nearly 
his whole life, had not yet made any considerable mark 
for himself. He was not far from thirty years old, and 
most people thought he had ability — as for him, he felt 
sure of it — but, so far, his chance had not presented 
itself. 

Miss Keene, when approached with the Taylor play, 
was not much interested. She was preparing a pro- 
duction of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and all her 
energies and resources were directed thereunto. It hap- 
pened, however, that work on the Shakespeare play went 
forward tardily, and, owing to some disappointments by 
costumers and scene-painters, the date of the first per- 
formance had to be postponed two weeks. Miss Keene 
was sufficiently in -need of something to fill the interim 
to buy — on the recommendation of her business man- 
ager and of Mr. Jefferson — the Taylor play outright for 
one thousand dollars. 

Jefferson, in his "Autobiography," has vividly described 



274 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

the scene when the stop-gap play that was to make fame 
and fortune for three of those present was read to Miss 
Keene's company. 

"The reading," he says, "took place in the green-room, 
and many were the furtive glances cast at Mr. Couldock 
and me as the strength of Abel Murcott and Asa Trenchard 
were revealed. Poor Sothern sat in the corner, looking 
quite disconsolate, fearing there was nothing in the play 
that would suit him; and as the dismal lines of Dun- 
dreary were read, he glanced over at me with a forlorn 
expression, as much as to say, T am cast for that dread- 
ful part' — little dreaming that the character of the imbe- 
cile lord would turn out to be the stepping-stone to his 
fortune. The success of the play proved the turning-point 
in the career of three persons — Laura Keene, Sothern, 
and myself." 

Perhaps it is not quite comprehensible to the play- 
going world how the play-acting world is ever alert for 
that "chance" which every actor feels is all he needs 
to make him rich and famous. Each new play is full of 
potentialities — until it is read or the parts are appor- 
tioned; then it is seen to be quite fiendishly calculated to 
keep nearly or quite every one in the company from doing 
what nature designed him for and art calls him to do. 
Either the playwright went malevolently about this 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 275 

repression business, or the stage-manager schemed it out 
and achieved his ends by giving everybody exactly the 
wrong part. 

"Poor Sothern," as Jefferson called him, may well have 
been disconsolate over the forty-seven silly lines allotted 
him. It was only one more disappointment in a long 
list, but Sothern felt that the list was already too long, 
and that the profession he had chosen for himself against 
all the traditions of his family was ill-chosen and were 
better abandoned. He had been acting for nine years — 
all but two years of the time in America — and had met 
with small success indeed. About the time of that read- 
ing in Laura Keene's green-room, Sothern was writing 
home to one of his English friends about "a long, strug- 
gling tear" that forced its way down his "cheek, that fate 
had done naught but cuff for years," and telling of gray 
hairs which "have been forced through the hotbed 
of my weary skull." 

It was to this ambitious, hard-working, but almost 
through-hoping young Englishman of two-and-thirty 
that the silly lines of Dundreary fell. At first he said he 
could do nothing with the part; "and certainly," as 
Jefferson testifies, "for the first two weeks it was a dull 
effort and produced but little effect." Then Sothern 
asked permission to rewrite Dundreary, and, this being 



276 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

granted, he began to feel his way with his audiences by 
introducing little extravagances of speech and action. 
Some of these were the result of marvellously minute 
studies he had made from real types — he used to con- 
tend, when charged with the exaggerations of Dundreary, 
that there was nothing in the portrayal he had not taken 
direct from life — and some of them were happy acci- 
dents, like the famous skipping walk. Of this walk it 
is told that, at a rehearsal of the play, Sothern, to keep 
warm in the cold theatre, was hopping and skipping 
about the outer confines of the stage, to the no small 
amusement of his fellow actors, when Miss Keene called 
sharply to him and asked if that were part of his rehearsal. 
He replied promptly that it was, and in a spirit of bravado 
kept on. In the same spirit he introduced the skip into 
his entrance that night, and found that it was an instan- 
taneous success, bringing a tremendous laugh for Dun- 
dreary where before there had been only tolerance. 
Cautiously, artistically, he proceeded to elaborate the 
part until, as Jefferson magnanimously says, "Before 
the first month was over he stood side by side with any 
other character in the play; and at the end of the run he 
was, in my opinion, considerably in advance of us all." 

The piece, put on for a fortnight, ran for one hundred 
and forty consecutive nights — a phenomenal run for 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 277 

that epoch — and thoroughly established, in New York 
at least, the fame of Jefferson and Sothern, and trans- 
formed them both from more or less discouraged young 
"members of stock" to men with ambition — and con- 
fidence — to "star." 

When the curtain descended the first night on Jefferson's 
immediately successful presentation of Asa Trenchard, 
"visions of large type, foreign countries, and increased 
remuneration" floated before him, and he was already 
resolved to be a star. 

Accordingly, when at the end of March " A Midsummer 
Night's Dream " was put on — not because the demand 
for "Our American Cousin" had abated, but because 
Miss Keene had grown tired of her part and tireder of 
hearing her two comedians praised above herself — 
Jefferson, who had not got on well with Miss Keene and 
who was of no mind to abandon Asa Trenchard, told her 
that he would not rejoin her company next season. She 
reproached him with lack of gratitude; to which he 
replied that he thought the honours were about even, and 
that, "anyway," he was going to "star"; at which Miss 
Keene sniffed her contempt and inquired in what play 
he would storm the country. He replied that, with her 
permission, he purposed to act "Our American Cousin." 
Miss Keene indicated that he "had another purpose 



27S THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

coming to him," so to speak. And there the matter rested 
for a time, until she deputed her business manager to 
speak to Mr. Jefferson — she herself not being on speak- 
ing terms with that hoity-toity young man — and require 
him to resign the part of Bottom in favour of Mr. Blake, 
a comedian of her company who had had no part in the 
Taylor play. This Jefferson refused to do, saying that 
if Mr. Blake wanted to play in "A Midsummer Night" 
he could play Puck. As Mr. Blake weighed two hundred 
pounds or thereabouts, and was unwieldy to boot, this 
suggestion did not meet with favour in any quarter, and 
there was a bitter quarrel, which finally came to an end 
by Jefferson's offer to lend his far slenderer and sprightlier 
person to Puck if Miss Keene would let him star in Taylor's 
play, and give her, for the use of it, one half the profits. 
His starring venture was not a success, and in September 
he joined Boucicault's forces at the Winter Garden. 
But during the years 1861-65 he toured Australia and 
South America, playing Asa Trenchard with some little 
success. 

The part was never again so prominent in his career 
as during that first run in New York; but Asa had done 
something for him which put his performance of that 
character, and even the confidence it gave him in his 
abilities, quite among the lesser results, for him, of Tom 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 279 

Taylor's play: it led him to Rip Van Winkle! The 
success he achieved as Asa was of a sort he longed to 
duplicate, and in his attempts to analyze it he evolved 
the idea of a Rip Van Winkle play, three or four bad 
dramatizations of which had already been acted without 
any considerable success. So much for Jefferson's fortune 
as indebted to Taylor's play. 

I have not been able to find out by just what arrange- 
ment with Miss Keene Sothern got the rights to Dun- 
dreary, but he played it in this country for months after 
she discontinued the piece, and in November, 1861, he 
opened with it at the Haymarket, London, where, after a 
month of discouraging business, it suddenly caught on, and 
played to crowded houses for four hundred consecutive 
nights. 

The part continued to be Sothern's most famous 
characterization, and he acted in it with undiminishing 
success until he died. Nothing else he ever did created 
such a furore; indeed, few things that anybody ever did 
on the stage have been so great popular achievements 
or have belonged so solely to their creators. The fortunes 
Dundreary earned for Sothern were princely; the fame he 
made for Sothern was not eclipsed by that of any other 
comedian of his day; the fashions he set for all the world 
were comparable to nothing in recent stage history: 



280 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Dundreary coats, Dundreary whiskers, Dundreary vests 
and monocles, had almost as universal vogue as "Dun- 
drearyisms " — some of which latter remain to us yet 
in the oft-quoted "Birds of a feather gather no moss," 
and similar perverted parables. 

It was amid the laughter of this piece — which he knew 
by heart — that John Wilkes Booth planned to accomplish 
the murder of Lincoln. When, on the morning of April 
14th, as he sat reading his letters in Mr. Ford's office, 
he heard that the President was going to attend the per- 
formance that night, he determined on a plan of action 
that came incredibly near allowing him to affect his escape 
and leave the deed, done in the sight of hundreds, shrouded 
in mystery. 

i I am indebted — after having interviewed every dis- 
coverable survivor of the audience at Ford's Theater that 
fateful Good Friday night, and being told that the Presi- 
dential party arrived at 8.30, at 9, at 9.30, and at all the 
times between — to Mr. George C. Maynard for a definite 
statement. Mr. Maynard, then of the War Telegraph 
Office, and now of the National Museum, was in the habit 
of keeping his theatre programmes. On the margin of the 
long play-bill of that night he made a note of the point 
in the play at which Mr. Lincoln came in, and wrote 
down the lines being spoken as the Presidential party 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 281 

entered the box. Florence Trenchard was trying to tell a 
joke to Dundreary, who — of course — did not see it. 

"Can't you see it?" she said. 

"No, I can't see it," he assured her. 

Just then Mr. Lincoln entered the state box on the 
upper right-hand side of the house, and Miss Keene, 
catching sight of him, said: "Well, everybody can see 
that!" nodding toward the box. And the orchestra 
struck up "Hail to the Chief," the audience cheered, and 
the play was at a standstill for a minute. 

In the elder Sothern's prompt-book (preserved by his son) 
this incident occurs late in the first act; whether it was 
the same in Miss Keene 's version I have been unable to 
learn, but it probably was, and that would fix the time 
of Mr. Lincoln's entrance at about half-past eight or a 
quarter to nine. 

The shot was fired during the second scene of the third 
act. It was during the scene when Asa is alone on the 
stage that Booth fired, jumped, and made his frantic 
rush across the front of the stage to the "prompt entrance " 
on the opposite side, and out through that to the stage 
door. 

The play, interrupted at that point, was never again 
presented in Washington until December 12, 1907, when 
the younger Sothern revived it at the Belasco Theatre, 



282 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

on the site of the old Seward house where Secretary 
Seward was nearly done to death by Booth's accomplice, 
Lewis Payne, on the same fatal night of Lincoln's murder. 
(Clara E. Laughlin, in McClure's Magazine for December, 
1908.) 



APPENDIX XVI 

atzerodt's statement 

At the conclusion of his argument in behalf of George 
A. Atzerodt, his counsel, W. E. Doster, read the follow- 
ing statement by Atzerodt: 

I am one of a party who agreed to capture the Presi- 
dent of the United States, but I am not one of a party to 
kill the President of the United States, or any member 
of the Cabinet, or General Grant, or Vice-President 
Johnson. The first plot to capture failed, the second — 
to kill — I broke away from the moment I heard of it. 

This is the way it came about: On the evening of 
April 14th I met Booth and Payne at the Herndon 
House in this city, at eight o'clock. He (Booth) said he 
himself should murder Mr. Lincoln and General Grant, 
Payne should take Mr. Seward, and I should take Mr. 
Johnson. I told him I would not do it; that I had gone 
into the thing to capture, but I was not going to kill. 
He told me I was a fool; that I would be hung anyhow; 
and that it was death for every man that backed out; 
and so we parted. I wandered about the streets until 
about two o'clock in the morning, and then went to the 
Kimmell House, and from there pawned my pistol at 
Georgetown, and went to my cousin's house in Mont- 
gomery County, where I was arrested the 19th following. 
After I was arrested, I told Provost-Marshal Wells and 

283 



284 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Provost-Marshal McPhail the whole story; also told it 
to Captain Monroe, and Colonel Wells told me if I pointed 
out the way Booth had gone I would be reprieved, and 
so I told him I thought he had gone down Charles County 
in order to cross the Potomac. The arms which were 
found in my room at the Kirkwood House, and a black 
coat, do not belong to me; neither were they left to be 
used by me. On the afternoon of April 14th, Herold 
called to see me and left the coat there. It is his coat, 
and all in it belongs to him, as you can see by the hand- 
kerchiefs, marked with his initial and with the name 
of his sister, Mrs. Naylor. Now I will state how I 
passed the whole of the evening of April 14th: In 
the afternoon, at about two o'clock, I went to Keleher's 
stable, on Eighth Street, near D, and hired a dark-bay 
mare and rode into the country for pleasure, and on my 
return put her up at Naylor's stable. The dark-bay 
horse which I had kept at Naylor's before, on or about 
April 3rd, belonged to Booth; also the saddle and 
bridle. I do not know what became of him. At about 
six in the evening I went to Naylor's again, and took out 
the mare, rode out for an hour, and returned her to 
Naylor's. It was then nearly eight, and I told him to 
keep the mare ready at ten o'clock, in order to return 
her to the man I hired her from. From there I went to 
the Herndon House. Booth sent a messenger to the 
"oyster bay" and I went. Booth wanted me to 
murder Mr. Johnson. I refused. I then went to the 
"oyster bay" on the Avenue, above Twelfth Street, 
and whiled away the time until nearly ten. At ten I got 
the mare, and having taken a drink with the hostler, 
galloped about town, and went to the Kimmell House. 
From there I rode down to the depot, and returned my 
horse, riding up Pennsylvania Avenue to Keleher's. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 285 

From Keleher's I went down to the Navy Yard to get 
a room with Wash. Briscoe. He had none, and by the 
time I got back to the Kimmell House it was nearly two. 
The man Thomas was a stranger I met on the street. 
Next morning, as stated, I went to my cousin's, in Mont- 
gomery County. (Conspiracy Trial, p. 307.) 



APPENDIX XVII 

THE TRIAL OF JOHN SURRATT 

Immediately after arriving in Montreal, April 18th, 
Surratt went to the house of a Southern gentleman con- 
nected with the Ontario Bank; his name was Porterfield. 
But Weichmann and United States detectives were in 
Montreal searching for Surratt, and it was deemed best 
for him to go out forty miles into the country, to the 
village of St. Liboire, where a priest named Father 
Boucher gave the fugitive asylum for three months. 
During August and the early days of September, Surratt 
was sheltered and hid by another priest, and the second 
week in September the two priests took him by steamer 
to Qubec and saw him aboard the Peruvian bound for 
Liverpool. Surratt remained in Liverpool until November, 
when he went to Rome and enlisted in the Papal Zouaves. 
He was recognized by a French-Canadian friend of 
Weichmann's, informed against, and after many delays, 
while diplomatic correspondence passed back and forth 
between Rome and Washington, his arrest was ordered 
by the Papal Government. He was arrested November 

286 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 287 

7, 1866, but escaped, the next morning, from the guard 
of six soldiers who were taking him to Rome. This he 
did by jumping over a balustrade on to a ledge of rocks 
projecting over a deep abyss. He made his perilous 
way into the valley below Velletri, and reached Naples, 
whence he sailed, November 19th, for Alexandria, Egypt. 
There, on the 27th, he was arrested by the United States 
consul-general. On December 21st he was sent home 
in irons on an armed United States vessel. His trial 
was held in the criminal court for the District of Columbia, 
Judge George P. Fisher presiding. The District Attorney 
was E. C. Carrington, who had one regular and two 
special assistants. Counsel for Surratt were Joseph H. 
Bradley and his son and R. T. Merrick. The trial 
opened June 10, 1867, and the taking of testimony from 
more than two hundred witnesses lasted until July 26th. 
On July 27th the District Attorney began his argument; 
he spoke for three whole days. Mr. Merrick, speaking 
for the defence, spoke for two days, and the senior Bradley 
followed him, speaking all day Friday. Pierrepont, chief 
of counsel assisting the prosecution, spoke all day Saturday, 
Monday, and Tuesday. On the seventh of August the 
judge charged the jury, and the jurors retired to their 
room at 11.32. Saturday, August 10th, at 1 p. m., they 
reappeared in court and begged to be dismissed, saying 



288 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

that they could not agree. Thus ended the trial of sixty- 
two days. Surratt was remanded to the Old Capitol 
Prison whence, some months later, he was released on 
twenty-five thousand dollars bail. Later, he was again 
arraigned for trial, but not on the charge of murder. The 
second trial never came off, and the prisoner was released. 
He has for many years been a respected and exemplary 
citizen of Baltimore, where he has done all in his power 
to bury the past, never referring to it even to his children. 
Every now and then an alleged newspaper interview 
with him appears; they are all fabrications — he has 
never been interviewed. For his boyish participation 
n a conspiracy of war, John Surratt has paid a penalty 
not much less hideous than some of the worst Russian 
horrors we read about. 



APPENDIX XVIII 

MAJOR RATHBONE'S STATEMENT 

Before Judge A. B. Olin, Justice Supreme Court, 
District of Columbia, on the 17th of April, Major Henry 
R. Rathbone subscribed and swore to the following 
statement: 

That on April 14th, 1865, at about twenty minutes 
past eight o'clock in the evening, he, with Miss Clara H. 
Harris, left his residence, at the corner of Fifteenth and 
H Streets, and joined the President and Mrs. Lincoln, 
and went with them in their carriage to Ford's Theatre, 
in Tenth Street. The box assigned to the President is 
in the second tier, on the right-hand side of the audience, 
and was occupied by the President and Mrs. Lincoln, 
Miss Harris, and the deponent — and by no other person. 
The box is entered by passing from the front of the build- 
ing, in the rear of the dress circle, to a small entry or 
passage-way, about eight feet in length and four feet in 
width. 

This passage-way is entered by a door, which opens 
on the inner side. The door is so placed as to make an 
acute angle between it and the wall behind it on the 
inner side. At the inner end of this passage-way is 
another door, standing squarely across, and opening 
into the box. On the left-hand side of the passage-way, 
and very near the inner end, is a third door, which also 

289 



290 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

opens into the box. This latter door was closed. The 
party entered the box through the door at the end of the 
passage-way. The box is so constructed that it may 
be divided into two by a movable partition, one of the 
doors described opening into each. The front of the 
box is about ten or twelve feet in length, and in the centre 
of the railing is a small pillar overhung with a curtain. 
The depth of the box from front to rear is about nine 
feet. The elevation of the box above the stage, including 
the railing, is about ten or twelve feet. 

When the party entered the box, a cushioned arm- 
chair was standing at the end of the box farthest from 
the stage and nearest the audience. This was also the 
nearest point to the door by which the box is entered. 
The President seated himself in this chair — and, except 
that he once left the chair for the purpose of putting on 
his overcoat, remained so seated until he was shot. 
Mrs. Lincoln was seated in a chair between the President 
and the pillar in the centre above described. At the 
opposite end of the box — that nearest the end of the 
stage — were two chairs. In one of these, standing in 
the corner, Miss Harris was seated. At her left hand, and 
along the wall running from that end of the box to the 
rear, stood a small sofa. At the end of this sofa, next 
to Miss Harris, this deponent was seated. The distance 
between this deponent and the President, as they were 
sitting, was about seven or eight feet; and the distance 
between this deponent and the door was about the same. 

The distance between the President, as he sat, and 
the door, was about four or five feet. The door, accord- 
ing to the recollection of this deponent, was not closed 
during the evening. When the second scene of the 
third act was being performed, and while this deponent 
was intently observing the proceedings upon the stage, 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 291 

with his back toward the door, he heard the discharge 
of a pistol behind him, and looking around, saw, through 
the smoke, a man between the door and the President. 
At the same time deponent heard him shout some word, 
which deponent thinks was "Freedom!" This deponent 
instantly sprang toward him and seized him; he wrested 
himself from the grasp, and made a violent thrust at the 
breast of deponent with a large knife. Deponent parried 
the blow by striking it up, and received a wound several 
inches deep in his left arm, between the elbow and the 
shoulder. The orifice of the wound is about an inch and 
a half in length, and extends upward toward the shoulder 
several inches. The man rushed to the front of the box, 
and deponent endeavoured to seize him again, but only 
caught his clothes as he was leaping over the railing of 
the box. The clothes, as deponent believes, were torn 
in this attempt to seize him. 

As he went over upon the stage deponent cried out, 
with a loud voice: "Stop that man!" Deponent then 
turned to the President; his position was not changed; 
his head was slightly bent forward, and his eyes were 
closed. Deponent saw that he was unconscious, and 
supposing him mortally wounded, rushed to the door for 
the purpose of calling medical aid. On reaching the outer 
door of the passage-way, as above described, deponent 
found it barred by a heavy piece of plank, one end of which 
was secured in the wall, and the other resting against the 
door. It had been so securely fastened that it required 
considerable force to remove it. This wedge, or bar, 
was about four feet from the floor. Persons upon the 
outside were beating against the door for the purpose of 
entering. Deponent removed the bar, and the door was 
opened. 

Several persons, who represented themselves to be 



292 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

surgeons, were allowed to enter. Deponent saw there 
Colonel Crawford, and requested him to prevent other 
persons from entering the box. Deponent then returned 
to the box, and found the surgeons examining the Presi- 
dent's person. They had not yet discovered the wound. 
As soon as it was discovered it was determined to remove 
him from the theatre. He was carried out, and this 
deponent then proceeded to assist Mrs. Lincoln, who was 
intensely excited, to leave the theatre. On reaching the 
head of the stairs, deponent requested Major Potter to aid 
him in assisting Mrs. Lincoln across the street, to the house 
to which the President was being conveyed. The wound 
which the deponent had received had been bleeding very 
profusely, and on reaching the house, feeling very faint 
from the loss of blood, he seated himself in the hall, and 
soon after fainted away, and was laid upon the floor. 
Upon the return of consciousness deponent was taken in a 
carriage to his residence. 

In the review of the transaction it is the confident belief 
of this deponent that the time which elapsed between the 
discharge of the pistol and the time when the assassin 
leaped from the box did not exceed thirty seconds. 
Neither Mrs. Lincoln nor Miss Harris had left their seats. 



APPENDIX XIX 

HARRY HAWK'S ACCOUNT 

Mr. Harry Hawk, who was playing the part of Asa 
Trenchard, made famous by Joseph Jefferson, was a dear 
friend of Edwin Booth's, and out of respect to the terribly 
sensitive feelings of the great tragedian refused all urgings 
to talk of the crime while Edwin was alive. After Edwin 
Booth's death, however, Mr. Hawk, on a visit to the house 
where Lincoln died, talked to Mr. Oldroyd, the custodian, 
and allowed Mr. Oldroyd to print the following statement 
in his book: 

Mrs. Muzzey, in the role of Mrs. Mountchessington, 
having just discovered that Asa Trenchard was not the 
man of wealth she supposed, had turned angrily to her 
daughter Georgina, saying: ' Go to your room; you may 
go to your room at once!' Then she turned haughtily 
and made her exit on the left, leaving me alone and looking 
after her. My lines were: 'Society, eh? Well, I guess I 
know enough to turn you inside out, old woman, you 
darned old sockdolaging man-trap!' I was looking up at 
the President's box as I repeated the lines, and the words 
had barely left my lips, and the shouts of laughter were 
ringing, when the shot sounded through the house." 
(Oldroyd, p. 28.) 

293 



APPENDIX XX 

AFFIDAVIT OF MISS HARRIS 

Clara H. Harris, being duly sworn, says that she has 
read the foregoing affidavit of Major Rathbone, and knows 
the contents thereof, that she was present at Ford's Theatre 
with the President, and Mrs. Lincoln, and Major Rath- 
bone on the evening of the fourteenth of April instant; that 
at the time she heard the discharge of the pistol she was 
attentively engaged in observing what was transpiring upon 
the stage, and looking round, she saw Major Rathbone 
spring from his seat and advance to the opposite side of the 
box; that she saw him engaged, as if in a struggle, with 
another man, but the smoke with which he was enveloped 
prevented this deponent from seeing distinctly the other 
man; that the first time she saw him distinctly was when 
he leaped from the box upon the stage ; that she then heard 
Major Rathbone cry out: "Stop that man!" and this 
deponent then immediately repeated the cry: "Stop that 
man! Won't somebody stop that man?" A moment 
after, some one from the stage asked: "What is it?" or 
"What is the matter?" and deponent replied: "The 

294 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 295 

President is shot." Very soon after, two persons, one 
wearing the uniform of a naval surgeon, and the other 
that of a soldier of the Veteran Reserve Corps, came upon 
the stage, and the deponent assisted them in climbing up 
to the box. 

And this deponent further says, that the facts stated in 
the foregoing affidavit, so far as the same came to the 
knowledge or notice of this deponent, are accurately stated 
therein. 



APPENDIX XXI 

BOOTH IN BOSTON 

Edwin Booth, at the Boston Theatre, was playing that 
night, not "Hamlet," as usually reported, but a double 
bill: "The Iron Chest" and "Don Cffisar de Bazan." 
He was playing Colman's tragedy, "The Iron Chest, " last, 
and at about the moment of John's crime Edwin, as Sir 
Edward Mortimer, the homicide, was standing with 
uplifted dagger threatening the life of a youth who seemed 
on the point of opening the iron chest wherein the secret 
of Sir Edward's guilt was locked. This was told the 
present writer by Miss Ida Vernon, Booth's friend and one- 
time leading woman, to whom he commented on the 
coincidence. 

Junius Brutus Booth was playing in Cincinnati, and with 
difficulty escaped the vengeance of a mob anxious to 
wreak its fury on any one belonging to the man reported 
to have murdered the President. 

At seven o'clock Saturday morning, April 15th, Henry C. 
Jarrett, manager of the Boston Theatre, where Edwin 
Booth was playing, wrote to him as follows : 

296 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 297 

Edwin Booth, Esq. 

My Dear Sir: A fearful calamity is upon us. The 
President of the United States has fallen by the hand of 
an assassin, and I am shocked to say suspicion points to 
one nearly related to you as the perpetrator of this horrid 
deed. God grant it may not prove so! With this knowl- 
edge, and out of respect to the anguish which will fill the 
public mind as soon as the appalling fact shall be fully 
revealed, I have concluded to close the Boston Theatre 
until further notice. Please signify to me your co-operation 
in this matter. 

In great sorrow, and in haste, I remain, yours very truly, 

Henry C. Jarrett. 

To this Edwin Booth immediately replied: 

Henry C. Jarrett, Esq. 

My Dear Sir: With deepest sorrow and great agitation 
I thank you for relieving me from my engagement with 
yourself and the public. The news of the morning has 
made me wretched indeed, not only because I have received 
the unhappy tidings of the suspicions of a brother's crime, 
but because a good man, and a most justly honoured and 
patriotic ruler, has fallen, in an hour of national joy, by 
the hand of an assassin. The memory of the thousands 
who have fallen in the field, in our country's defence, dur- 
ing this struggle, cannot be forgotten by me, even in this, 
the most distressing day of my life. And I most sincerely 
pray that the victories we have already won may stay the 
brand of war and the tide of loyal blood. While mourn- 
ing, in common with all other loyal hearts, the death of the 
President, I am oppressed by a private woe not to be 
expressed in words. But whatever calamity may befall me 
and mine, my country, one and indivisible, has my warmest 
devotion. Edwin Booth. 



APPENDIX XXII 

LETTER OF WILLIAM T. CLARK 

In the room where Lincoln died there now hangs the 
following letter written by young William T. Clark, a 
soldier belonging to Company D, 13th Massachusetts 
Infantry, and detailed to duty in the Quartermaster's 
Department; he was the recent occupant of the little room 
where the President died: 

Washington, D. C, Wednesday, April 19, 1865. 

Dear Sister Ida: To-day the funeral of Mr. Lincoln 
takes place. The streets are being crowded at this early 
hour (9 a. m.), and the procession will probably not move 
for three hours. 

The past few days have been of intense excitement; 
arrests are numerously made — if any party is heard to 
utter secesh sentiments. The time has come when persons 
cannot say what they please, for the people are awfully 
indignant. Hundreds daily call at the house to gain 
admission to my room. I was engaged nearly all Sunday 
with one of Frank Leslie's special artists, aiding him in 
making a complete drawing of the last moments of Mr. 
Lincoln, as I know the position of every one present. He 
succeeded in executing a fine sketch, which will appear in 
their paper. He wished to mention the names of all 
pictures in the room, particularly the photograph of 
yourself, Clara, and Nannie; but I told him he must not 

298 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 299 

do that, as they were members of my family, and I did not 

wish them to be made so public. He also urged me to give 

him my picture, or at least to allow him to take my sketch, 

but I could not see that either. Everybody has a great 

desire to obtain some memento from my room, so that 

whoever comes in has to be closely watched for fear they 

will steal something. I have a lock of Mr. Lincoln's hair, 

which I have had neatly framed ; also a piece of linen with 

a portion of his brain. The pillow and case upon which 

he lay when he died, and nearly all his wearing apparel, I 

intend to send to Robert Lincoln as soon as the funeral is 

over, as I consider him most justly entitled to them. The 

same mattress is on my bed, and the same coverlid covers 

me nightly that covered him while dying. Enclosed you 

will find a piece of lace Mrs. Lincoln wore on her head 

during the evening, and was dropped by her while entering 

my room to see her dying husband; it is worth keeping 

for its historical value. The cushions worked by Clara, 

and the cushion by you, you little dreamed would be so 

historically connected with such an event. Love to father, 

mother, Clara. Don't forget you have a brother, and 

send me a longer note soon. 

I will write again soon. , r „ . Al 

Your atiec. brother, 

Willie. 
Willie's excellent but amusingly "important" intentions 
about the bestowal of the clothing of Mr. Lincoln and the 
pillow-slip on which his dying head lay were not destined 
to fulfilment. The pillow-slips, stained with Lincoln's 
blood, were at last accounts still in the Peterson family, 
in the keeping of Mr. Peterson's son, living in Baltimore. 
The bedstead on which Lincoln died was sold by Mr. 



300 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Peterson and passed eventually into the possession of Mr. 
Charles F. Gunther of Chicago. The clothes Mr. Lincoln 
had on when shot were sold by Forbes, his valet, to Mr. 
Frank G. Logan, also of Chicago. The small Deringer 
pistol with which Lincoln was shot, the ball which entered 
his brain, the small section of skull it carried with it, and 
the probes used in removing ball and bone, are in a safe 
in the office of the Judge-Advocate General, in the War 
Office, Washington. The bar of wood used by Booth in 
barricading the door is in a chest in the cellar of the State, 
War, and Navy Building, along with the knife wherewith 
Major Rathbone was slashed and a lot of other "exhibits " 
of the conspiracy trial, including Booth's saddle, the blue- 
and-black checked necktie he had on when shot, his com- 
pass with the candle drippings, his diary, etc. Here and 
there throughout the country are programmes of the even- 
ing claimed each to be " the one the President was holding 
when shot." None of these is authenticated. The flag in 
which Booth's spur caught hangs in the Treasury Depart- 
ment, whence it was borrowed. Mr^ Charles Ford, of Balti- 
more, has the portrait of Washington, with its frame gashed 
by Booth's spur, which hung in the centre of the Treasury 
regimental flag draping the front of the box. The rocker 
in which Lincoln sat is in the possession of the Govern- 
ment. Mr. Osborn H. Oldroyd owns the spur Booth wore. 



APPENDIX XXIII 

DESPATCHES OF THE NIGHT 

At midnight Colonel T. T. Eckert wired General 
Grant en route between Washington and Philadelphia: 
"The President was assassinated at Ford's Theatre at 
10.20 to-night and cannot live. The wound is a pistol shot 
through the head. Secretary Seward and his son Frede- 
rick were also assassinated at their residence and are in a 
dangerous condition. The Secretary of War desires that 
you return to Washington immediately. Please answer 
on receipt of this." Half an hour later, Dana wired 
General Grant at Philadelphia: "Keep a close watch on 
all persons who come near you." At 1.30 Stanton tele- 
graphed the news to General Dix at New York, still speak- 
ing of the assassin without a name. At 3.20 he telegraphed 
again to Dix saying: "Investigation strongly indicates 
John Wilkes Booth as assassin of the President. Whether 
he was at Seward's is unknown. His horse has been 
found." At 4.10: " It is now ascertained with reasonable 
certainty that two assassins were engaged in the horrible 
crime, Wilkes Booth being the one that shot the President, 

301 



302 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

the other a companion of his whose name is not known, 
but whose description is so clear that he can hardly escape." 
As late as 8.40 p. m. Saturday, Dana wired to Buffalo a 
description of Booth and one of Atzerodt who was then 
thought to have been the assassin of Seward. 



APPENDIX XXIV 

STATEMENT OF MR. FIELD, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF 
THE TREASURY 

On Friday evening, April 14, 1865, at about half-past 
ten o'clock, I was sitting in the reading-room at Willard's 
Hotel, engaged with a newspaper, when a person hur- 
riedly entered the hotel and passed up the hall, announc- 
ing in a loud tone of voice that the President had just 
been shot at Ford's Theatre. I started to my feet, and 
had hardly reached the office when two other persons 
came in and confirmed the report — which at first I 
was hardly able to credit. I had parted about fifteen 
minutes previously with Mr. Mellen, of the Treasury 
Department, who had retired to his room for the night, 
and I at once went to him and communicated what had 
occurred, and we started together for the scene of the 
tragedy. 

We found the streets already crowded with excited 
masses of people, and when we reached the theatre there 
was a very large assemblage in front of it as well as of 
the opposite house, belonging to Mr. Peterson, into 

303 



304 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

which the President had been conveyed. The people 
around the theatre related to us substantially the general 
facts connected with the assassination which have since 
been communicated to the public. The impression was 
prevalent, however, at that time, that the President had 
been shot in the breast, about the region of the heart, 
and that the wound might not prove fatal. After a few 
minutes we crossed the street, and endeavoured to gain 
admission into the house where Mr. Lincoln lay. This 
I effected with some little difficulty. 

The first person whom I met in the hall was Miss 
Harris, daughter of United States Senator Ira Harris, 
of New York, who had been at the theatre with the Pres- 
idential party. She informed me that the President 
was dying, but desired me not to communicate the fact 
to Mrs. Lincoln, who was in the front parlour. Several 
other persons who were there confirmed the statement 
as to Mr. Lincoln's condition. I then entered the front 
parlour, where I found Mrs. Lincoln in an indescribable 
state of agitation. She repeated over and again. "Why 
did n't he kill me ? Why did n't he kill me?" 

I asked her if there was any service I could render 
her, and she requested me to go for Dr. Stone, or some 
other eminent physician. Both Dr. Stone and Surgeon- 
General Barnes had already been sent for, but neither 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 305 

had yet arrived. On my way out I met Major T. T. 
Eckert, of the War Department, who told me that he 
was himself going for Dr. Stone. I then went for Dr. 
Hall, one of the most distinguished surgeons in the 
District. I found him at home, and he at once accom- 
panied me. When we again reached the neighbourhood 
of the house access had become very difficult, guards 
having been stationed on every side. 

After much effort, I was enabled to gain admission 
for Dr. Hall, but was not at that time permitted to enter 
myself; accordingly I returned to Willard's. The whole 
population of the city was by this time out, and all kinds 
of conflicting stories were being circulated. At three or 
four o'clock I again started for Mr. Peterson's house. 
This time I was admitted without difficulty. I proceeded 
at once to the room in which the President lay dying. 
It was a small chamber, in an extension or back building, 
on a level with the first or parlour floor. The President 
was lying on his back, diagonally across a low, double 
bedstead, his head supported by two pillows on the 
outer side of the bed. 

The persons in the room were the Secretaries 
McCulloch, Stanton, Welles, and Harlan, Postmaster- 
General Dennison, the, Attorney-General, the Assistant- 
Secretary of the Interior, Senator Sumner of Massachu- 



306 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

setts, General Halleck, General Augur, General Meigs, 
General J. F. Farnsworth, of Illinois; General Todd, of 
Dakota; the President's assistant private secretary, 
Major Hay; the medical gentlemen, and perhaps two 
or three others. Dr. Stone was sitting on the foot of the 
bed. An army surgeon was sitting opposite the Presi- 
dent's head, occasionally feeling his pulse, and applying 
his fingers to the arteries of the neck and heart. 

Mr. Lincoln seemed to be divested of all clothing, 
except the bed coverings. His eyes were closed, and the 
lids and surrounding parts so injected with blood as to 
present the appearance of having been bruised. He was 
evidently totally unconscious, and was breathing regu- 
larly but heavily, and with an occasional sigh escaping 
with the breath. There was scarcely a dry eye in the 
room, and the scene was the most solemn and impressive 
one I ever witnessed. After a while, Captain Robert 
Lincoln, of General Grant's staff, and eldest son of the 
President, entered the chamber, and stood at the head- 
board, leaning over his father. 

For a time his grief completely overpowered him, but 
he soon recovered himself, and behaved in the most 
manly manner until the closing of the scene. As the 
morning wore on, the condition of the President 
remained unchanged until about seven o'clock. In the 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 307 

meantime, it came on to rain heavily, and the scene from 
the windows was in dreary sympathy with that which 
was going on within. Just before this, Mrs. Lincoln 
had been supported into the chamber, and had thrown 
herself moaning upon her husband's body. She was 
permitted to remain bul a few minutes, when she was 
carried out, in an almost insensible condition. 

At about seven o'clock the President's breathing 
changed in a manner to indicate that death was rapidly 
approaching. It became low and fitful, with frequent 
interruptions. Several times I thought that all was over, 
until the fitful respiration was resumed. At last, at just 
twenty-two minutes past seven o'clock, without a struggle, 
without a convulsive movement, without a tremor, he 
ceased breathing — and was no more. 

Thus died this great, pure, kind-hearted man, who 
never willingly injured a human being — the greatest 
martyr to liberty the world has ever seen. 

Shortly after his death, finding that his eyes were not 
entirely closed, I placed my hands upon them. One 
of the attendant surgeons first put nickel cents upon 
them, and then substituted silver half-dollars. It was 
twenty minutes or half an hour before the body commenced 
to grow cold. The lower jaw began to fall slightly, and 
the lower teeth were exposed. One of the medical 



308 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

gentlemen bound up the jaw with a pocket-handker- 
chief. Mr. Stanton drew down the window-shades, 
and I left the chamber of death. Immediately after the 
decease, the Rev. Dr. Gurley had offered up a fervent 
and affecting prayer in the room, interrupted only by 
the sobs of those present. 

When I left the room he was again praying in the 
front parlour. Poor Mrs. Lincoln's moans were distress- 
ing to listen to. After the prayer was over, I entered 
the parlour, and found Mrs. Lincoln, supported in the 
arms of her son, Robert. She was soon taken to her 
carriage. As she reached the front door, she glanced at 
the theatre opposite, and exclaimed several times: "Oh, 
that dreadful house ! That dreadful house ! " Immediately 
thereafter guards were stationed at the door of the 
room in which the President's body lay. In a few minutes 
I left myself. It is hoped that some historical painter 
will be found capable of portraying that momentous 
death scene. 



APPENDIX XXV 

SOUTHERN HORROR OF BOOTH'S DEED 

Southern horror of Booth's deed was far more genuine 
and more widespread than many persons in the North 
were aware of. On April 16th, General R. S. Ewell and 
sixteen other generals of the Confederate States Army in 
prison at Fort Warren, addressed General Grant as 
follows : 

Lieut.-Gen. U. S. Grant, 

Commanding U. S. Army. 
General : 

You will appreciate, I am sure, the sentiment which 
prompts me to drop you these lines. Of all the mis- 
fortunes which could befall the Southern people, or any 
Southern man, by far the greatest, in my judgment, 
would be the prevalence of the idea that they could 
entertain any other than feelings of unqualified abhor- 
rence and indignation for the assassination of the Presi- 
dent of the United States and the attempt to assassinate 
the Secretary of State," etc. (O. R. Series I., vol. 
xlvi., part in., p. 787.) 

The Richmond Whig, of April 17th, said: "The 

heaviest blow which has ever fallen on the people of the 

South has descended." 

309 



310 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

The National Intelligencer, Washington, reported in 
its issue of April 24th that "nearly the whole city of 
Memphis was draped in the habiliments of mourning, 
and the sorrow seemed to be universal." 

In Savannah, Ga., a great mass-meeting was held on 
April 22d to "take fitting notice of the late appalling 
calamity which has befallen the nation in the death of 
its beloved head, Abraham Lincoln." And, in general, 
this attitude toward Booth's mad deed was pretty well 
shared. 

Mrs. J. A. Hayes, of Colorado Springs, a daughter of 
Jefferson Davis, in August, 1907, wrote a letter to Gen- 
eral William J. Palmer, in the course of which she said: 

I was a small child at the time, and, like most Southern 
children, I looked upon Lincoln as the arch-enemy of my 
country; and, thoughtlessly, as the servants and guards 
around us were rejoicing, I ran to my father with what I 
supposed would be good news to him. He gravely and 
gently took me in his arms and explained to me that this 
terrible deed had been done by a crazy man who, no doubt, 
thought he was the saviour of the South, though really her 
very worst enemy. My father added, "Always remember, 
my little daughter, no wrong can ever make a right. The 
South does not wish her rights to come through dastardly 
murder, but through fair fight." Then he sighed deeply 
and said: "This is the bitterest blow that could have 
been dealt to the Southern cause. Lincoln was a just 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 311 

man and would have been fair and generous in his treat- 
ment of the Southern people; his successor is a man we 
can expect nothing from." 

Lincoln, who knew my father [would have known] 
. . . that Jefferson Davis and the other Southern 
men accused were incapable of instigating murder. . . . 
Jefferson Davis could never understand how such an 
impression could have gained foothold among the men who 
made history in the North, for many of them had known 
him and should have known that he was above so vile an 
action. (World's Work, February, 1908, p. 9902.) 



APPENDIX XXVI 

THE AWARDS 

On July 24th, 1866, the Committee on Claims, 
through its chairman, Hon. George W. Hotchkiss, of 
Binghamton, N. Y., made before the first session of 
the 39th Congress its report on the apportionment of the 
large rewards offered for the capture of Booth, Herold, 
Atzerodt, and Payne. It awarded Colonel Lafayette C. 
Baker and Colonel Everton J. Conger each $17,500 of 
the $75,000 due for the capture of Booth and Herold, 
but so strong was the dissatisfaction with this that the 
report was disapproved and the following apportionment 
substituted : 

E. J. Conger, detective $15,000 

Lafayette C. Baker, detective . . . 3,750 
Luther B. Baker, detective .... 3,000 
Edward P. Doherty, in command of 

the cavalry 5,250 

James R. O'Beirne, detective . . . 2,000 
H. H. Wells, George Cottingham, 

Alexander Lovett, each $1,000 . . . 3,000 
Sergeant Boston Corbett, Sergeant An- 
drew Wendell, Corporal Charles Zim- 
312 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 313 

mer, Corporal Michael Uniac, Cor- 
poral John Winter, Corporal Her- 
man Newgarten, Corporal John Walz, 
Corporal Oliver Lonpay, Corporal 
Michael Hormsbey, Privates John 
Myers, John Ryan, William Byrne, 
Philip Hoyt, Martin Kelley, Henry 
Putnam, Frank McDaniel, Lewis 
Savage, Abraham Genay, Emery Par- 
ady, David Baker, William Mc- 
Quade, John Millington, Frederick 
Dietz, John H. Singer, Carl Stein- 
brugge, and Joseph Zisgen, each 
$1,653.85 343,000 



S75,000 



Wells and Lovett were among the officers who arrested 
Dr. Mudd and got from him information about the visit 
and departure of Booth and Herold. Dana, Williams, 
Gavacan, and Joshua Lloyd were other officers in the 
same "capture," but they got nothing. Cottingham was 
the special officer of Major O'Beirne's staff to whom, 
"through strategy," John M. Lloyd made his "con- 
fession." The soldiers were all of the 26th New York 
Cavalry. Major O'Beirne was the detective to whom 
the credit and reward for the capture of Booth and 
Herold should really have gone. (Baker, p. 565; Old- 
royd, p. 87; Report Xo. 99, 39th Congress.) 



314 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

For the capture of Atzerodt, the following awards were 
paid: 

Major E. R. Artman, 215th Pennsyl- 
vania Infantry $1,250.00 

Sergeant L. W. Gemmill, 1st Dela- 
ware Cavalry 3,598.54 

Christopher Ross, David H. Baker, 
Albert Bender, Samuel J. Williams, 
George W. Young, James Long- 
acre, privates 1st Delaware, and 
James Purdoan, citizen, each 
$2,878.78 20,151.46 

$25,000.00 
Major Artman was not present at the capture, but it 

was he who sent out from Monocacy Junction, Md., the 

force which effected the arrest. 

The capture of Payne was rewarded as follows: 

Major H. W. Smith $1,000 

Richard C. Morgan, Eli Devore, Charles 
H. Rosch, Thomas Sampson, W. M. 
Wermerskirch, each $500 .... 2,500 

J. H. Kimball, citizen, and P. H. Clark, 

citizen, each $500 1,000 

Susan Jackson, Mary Ann Griffin, col- 
ored, each, $250 '500 

$5,000 
Smith, Morgan, Devore, Rosch, Sampson, and Wer- 
merskirch were the officers present. Susan Jackson 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 315 

was a servant of Mrs. Surratt. She told her aunt, Mary 
Ann Griffin, working for J. H. Kimball, things she had 
seen or heard that might incriminate Mrs. Surratt. The 
two women told Mr. Kimball, and he started with them 
for General Augur's office. On the way they met P. M. 
Clark who joined the expedition. The Government paid 
$1,500 to these four as "instrumental in setting the force 
in motion for taking possession of the Surratt house." 
This, although it had claimed to have done this on the 
evidence of Captain Gleason, who told Stanton what 
Weichmann had told him. 



APPENDIX XXVII 



TRIAL ATTENDANCE 



"A perfect park of carriages stands by the door to the 
left, and from these dismount major-generals' wives in 
rustling silks, daughters of congressmen attired like the 
lilies of the milliner, little girls who hope to be young 
ladies and have come up with 'Pa' to look at the assas- 
sins; even brides are here, in the fresh blush of their 
nuptials . . . they chatter and smile and go up the 
three flights of stairs to the court-room, about as large as 
an ordinary town-house parlour." (George Alfred Town- 
send, "The Trial of the Conspirators," p. 63.) 



316 



APPENDIX XXVIII 

spangler's statement 

Edward Spangler, soon after his release from prison, 
went to Dr. Mudd's, and there made his home until he 
died, about eighteen months later. "He was a quiet, 
genial man," says Miss Nettie Mudd, the doctor's daugh- 
ter and biographer, "greatly respected by the members 
of our family and the people of the neighbourhood. His 
greatest pleasure seemed to be found in extending kind- 
nesses to others, and particularly to children, of whom 
he was very fond. Not long after his death my father, 
in searching for a tool in Spangler's tool-chest, found a 
manuscript, in Spangler's own handwriting, and pre- 
sumably written while he was in prison." The manu- 
script was as follows: 

I was born in York County, Penn., and am about 
forty-three years of age. I am a house-carpenter by 
trade, and became acquainted with J. Wilkes Booth 
when a boy. I worked for his father in building a 
cottage in Harford County, Md., in 1854. Since a. d. 
1853 I have done carpenter work for the different thea- 
tres in the cities of Baltimore and Washington, to wit: 

317 



318 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

The Holliday Street Theatre and the Front Street Theatre, 
of Baltimore, and Ford's Theatre in the city of Washing- 
ton. I have acted also as scene-shifter in all the above- 
named theatres, and had a favourable opportunity to 
become acquainted with the different actors. I have 
acted as scene-shifter in Ford's Theatre ever since it was 
opened up to the night of the assassination of President 
Lincoln. During the winter of a. d. 1862 and 1863 
J. Wilkes Booth played a star engagement at Ford's 
Theatre for two weeks. At that time I saw him and 
conversed with him frequently. After completing his 
engagement he left Washington and I did not see him 
again until the winters of a. d. 1864 and 1865. I then 
saw him at various times in and about Ford's Theatre. 
Booth had free access to the theatre at all times, and 
made himself very familiar with all persons connected with 
it. He had a stable in the rear of the theatre where he 
kept his horses. A boy, Joseph Burroughs, commonly 
called "Peanut John," took care of them whenever Booth 
was absent from the city. I looked after his horses, which 
I did at his request, and saw that they were properly cared 
for. Booth promised to pay me for my trouble, but he 
never did. I frequently had the horses exercised, during 
Booth's absence from the city, by "Peanut John," walking 
them up and down the alley. "Peanut John" kept the 
key to the stable in the theatre, hanging upon a nail behind 
the small door, which opened into the alley at the rear of 
the theatre. Booth usually rode out on horseback every 
afternoon and evening, but seldom remained out later than 
eight or nine o'clock. He always went and returned alone. 
I never knew of his riding out on horseback and staying 
out all night, or of any person coming to the stable with 
him, or calling there for him. He had two horses at the 
stable only a short time. He brought them there some 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 319 

time in the month of December. A man called George 
and myself repaired and fixed the stable for him. I usually 
saddled the horse for him when "Peanut John" was 
absent. About the first of March, Booth brought another 
horse and a buggy and harness to the stable, but in what 
manner I do not know; after that he used to ride out with 
his horse and buggy, and I frequently harnessed them up 
for him. I never saw any person ride out with him or 
return with him from these rides. 

On the Monday evening previous to the assassination, 
Booth requested me to sell the horse, harness, and buggy, 
as he said he should leave the city soon. I took them the 
next morning to the horse-market and had them put up at 
auction, with the instruction not to sell unless they would 
net two hundred and sixty dollars: this was in accordance 
with Booth's orders to me. As no person bid sufficient 
to make them net that amount, they were not sold, and I 
took them back to the stable. I informed Booth of the 
result that same evening in front of the theatre. He 
replied that he must then try and have them sold at private 
sale, and asked me if I would help him. I replied "Yes." 
This was about six o'clock in the evening, and the conversa- 
tion took place in the presence of John F. Sleichmann and 
others. The next day I sold them for two hundred and 
sixty dollars. The purchaser accompanied me to the 
theatre. Booth was not in, and the money was paid to 
James J. Gifford, who receipted for it. I did not see 
Booth to speak to him, after the sale, until the evening of 
the assassination. 

Upon the afternoon of April 14th I was told by "Peanut 
John" that the President and General Grant were coming 
to the theatre that night, and that I must take out the 
partition in the President's box. I was assisted in doing it 
by Ritterspaugh and "Peanut John." 



320 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

In the evening, between five and six o'clock, Booth came 
into the theatre and asked me for a halter. I was very 
busy at work at the time on the stage preparatory to the 
evening performance, and Ritterspaugh went upstairs 
and brought one down. I went out to the stable with 
Booth and put the halter upon the horse. I commenced 
to take off the saddle when Booth said: "Never mind, I 
do not want it off, but let it and the bridle remain." He 
afterward took the saddle off himself, locked the stable, 
and went back to the theatre. 

Booth, Maddox, "Peanut John," and myself imme- 
diately went out of the theatre to the adjoining restau- 
rant next door, and took a drink at Booth's expense. I 
then went immediately back to the theatre, and Ritters- 
paugh and myself went to supper. I did not see Booth 
again until between nine and ten o'clock. About that time 
Debonay called to me, and said that Booth wanted me to 
hold his horse as soon as I could be spared. I went to the 
back door and Booth was standing in the alley holding a 
horse by the bridle-rein, and requested me to held it. I 
took the rein, but told him I could not remain, as Gifford 
was gone, and that all of the responsibility rested on me. 
Booth then passed into the theatre. I called to Debonay 
to send "Peanut John" to hold the horse. He came, and 
took the horse, and I went back to my proper place. 

In about a half hour afterward I heard a shot fired, and 
immediately saw a man run across the stage. I saw him 
as he passed by the centre door of the scenery, behind which 
I then stood ; this door is usually termed the centre cham- 
ber door. I did not recognize the man as he crossed the 
stage as being Booth. I then heard some one say that the 
President was shot. Immediately all was confusion. I 
shoved the scenes back as quickly as possible in order to 
clear the stage, as many were rushing upon it. I was very 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 321 

much frightened, as I heard persons halloo "Burn the 
theatre!" I did not see Booth pass out; my situation 
was such that I could not see any person pass out of the 
back door. The back door has a spring attached to it, 
and would shut of its own accord. I usually slept in 
the theatre, but I did not upon the night of the assassina- 
tion; I was afraid the theatre would be burned, and slept 
in a carpenter's shop adjoining. 

I never heard Booth express himself in favour of the 
rebellion, or opposed to the Government, or converse upon 
political subjects; and I have no recollection of his men- 
tioning the name of President Lincoln in any connection 
whatever. I know nothing of the mortise hole said to be 
in the wall behind tne door of the President's box, or of 
any wooden bar to fasten or hold the door there, or of the 
lock being out of order. I did not notice any hole in the 
door. Gifford usually attended to the carpentering in the 
front part of the theatre, while I did the work about the 
stage. Mr. Gifford was the boss carpenter, and I was 
under him. 



APPENDIX XXIX 

MRS. SURRATT AND JOHN NOTHEY 

On the twelfth of April, 1865, George H. Calvert, Jr., a 
resident of Bladensburg, Md., wrote to Mrs. Mary E. 
Surratt as follows : 

Riversdale, April 12, 1865. 
Mrs. M. E. Surratt: 

Dear Madam: During a late visit to the lower portion 
of the county, I ascertained of the willingness of Mr. 
Nothey to settle with you, and desire to call your attention 
to the fact, in urging the settlement of the claim of my late 
father's estate. However unpleasant, I must insist upon 
closing up this matter, as it is imperative, in an early settle- 
ment of the estate, which is necessary. 

You will, therefore, please inform me at your earliest 
convenience, as to how and when you will be able to pay 
the balance remaining due on the land purchased by your 
late husband. 

I am, dear madam, yours respectfully, 
(C. T. p. 126.) George H. Calvert, Jr. 

This was the letter which took Mrs. Surratt to Surratts- 
ville on April 14th. While there she wrote a letter to Mr. 
John Nothey and gave it to Mr. B. F. Gwynn, a neighbour 
who had been privy to the transaction between the late 

322 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 323 

John Surratt and John Nothey, asking Mr. Gwynn to 
deliver the note to Nothey and to read it to him. (C. T. p. 
126.) This Mr. Gwynn did. The note read: 

Surrattsville, Md., April 14, 1865. 
Mr. John Nothey: 

Sir: I have this day received a letter from Mr. Calvert, 
intimating that either you or your friend have represented 
to him that I am not willing to settle with you for the land. 

You know that I am ready, and have been waiting for 
the last two years; and now, if you do not come within the 
next ten days, I will settle with Mr. Calvert, and bring suit 
against you immediately. 

Mr. Calvert will give you a deed on receiving payment. 

M. E. Surratt, 
(C. T. p. 126.) Administratrix of J H. Surratt. 

These letters were produced as proof of the errand that 
called her to Surrattsville on Good Friday afternoon, but 
it was considered reasonable to adjudge the letters attempts 
to prove an excuse for going — the real reason being that 
she wished to carry a pair of field-glasses for Booth, and to 
tell the drunken Lloyd to have the carbines ready. It 
seems far likelier that if she were implicated in the plot she 
would have refused to go near Surrattsville that day. 



APPENDIX XXX 

JOHN P. BROPHY 

Mrs. Surratt's last words were to John P. Brophy to 
whom she said: "Good-bye — take care of Annie." On 
the sixth of January, 1908, Mr. Brophy, formerly a profes- 
sor in Gonzaga College, Washington, and then a clerk in 
the Supreme Court, gave an address before the Friendly 
Sons of St. Patrick, at Delmonico's, New York. 

"His subject was the assassination of President Lincoln, 
with especial reference to the accusation brought against 
Mrs. Mary E. Surratt and her subsequent execution. Mr. 
Brophy was acquainted with several of the actors in the 
tragedy and its accompanying incidents, and was one of 
those who made an attempt to intercede on behalf of Mrs. 
Surratt. 

" Mr. Brophy related at length the conception of the plot 
against Lincoln and the failure of the conspirators to carry 
out their first plan of kidnapping. The speaker told of 
Booth's meeting with John H. Surratt, Mrs. Surratt's son, 
and of the boy's joining in the first conspiracy to kidnap 
Lincoln. Mrs. Surratt, he said, knew nothing of it. 
Booth, happening to meet her as she was being handed into 
her carriage, and having already decided to kill Lincoln, 
instead of further pursuing the old plan to kidnap the 
President, asked her to take a package, which he said 

324 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 325 

contained a compass, and leave it for him at a certain hotel 
on her way. She willingly consented to do what seemed 
to her a trifling favour, and this act, innocent as it seemed, 
cost her her life. 

"Her death, Mr. Brophy said, came about through the 
perjured statements of conspirator Lloyd, whom the 
speaker characterized as a ' drunken sot,' through the work 
of an 'unlawful military tribunal,' and the 'usurpation' 
of judicial power. 

"When the trial was near its end, Mr. Brophy said, Louis 
J. Weichmann, who had been the chief witness against her, 
came to Mr. Brophy and wanted to know what the effect 
of his testimony had been. Mr. Brophy accused him of 
attempting to have an innocent woman killed, and Weich- 
mann acknowledged to Mr. Brophy that he believed Mrs. 
Surratt to be innocent. 

" ' Some time last winter,' Mr. Brophy quotes the man as 
saying, ' I suspected the plot against the President. I told 
a clerk in the War Department, and he informed Stanton. 
Stanton gave me the choice between turning State's 
evidence and hanging. Terrified, I told what I had heard, 
and, although I believed Mrs. Surratt to be innocent, Mr. 
Stanton appeared to believe her guilty. I did not want to 
be hanged.' 

" Mr. Brophy told Weichmann that he ought to try to 
avert the result of his testimony by telling the truth to Mr. 
Stanton. Weichmann replied that Stanton's hatred of 
Catholics and of Southern women would be Mrs. Surratt's 
undoing, and that he could do nothing to help her. Mr. 
Brophy went to the White House, but was not allowed to 
see President Johnson. Judge Holt would not let Mr. 
Brophy appear as a witness. 

"The professor, failing to reach official ears, tried to 
publish what he had learned from Weichmann in the 



326 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

National Intelligencer, of Washington, he says, but was 
told that the article was 'too strong.' Finally he pub- 
lished it in a pamphlet, and the morning after, before he 
was up, his room was searched by Government detectives, 
but the pamphlets had all been sent out, and nothing was 
found to incriminate him. 

"Mr. Brophy told his hearers that all through the trial 
and the execution of Mrs. Surratt, papers proving her 
innocence were hidden in Stanton's safe. These papers 
included Booth's diary, which explained all the phases of 
the situation. He said that Stanton and Holt also knew 
that young Surratt had nothing to do with the assas- 
sination. 

" Mr. Brophy quoted from a conversation which he had 
had with Chief Baker, of the Government detective bureau, 
in which he said that Baker asserted that Stanton and Holt 
were both so bigoted by nature that they stood ready to 
convict any Catholic on whom suspicion might for any 
cause fall. 

"The speaker told of his effort to save Mrs. Surratt 
through his own affidavit, and after his being put out of 
the White House by soldiers by order of United States 
Senators Preston King, of Albany, and Lane, of Kansas. 
He said that Mrs. Surratt's father confessor, who called at 
the White House after that, with the doomed woman's 
daughter, Anna, were also driven away by the soldiers. 
Then Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas, he said, tried, and 
although she pushed past the soldiers and saw the Presi- 
dent, accomplished nothing." (Washington Post, Janu- 
ary 7, 1908.) 



APPENDIX XXXI 

THE HOLT-JOHNSON CONTROVERSY 

The petition to the President for clemency to Mrs. 
Surratt read as follows: 

"To the President: The undersigned, members of the 
Military Commission appointed to try the persons charged 
with the murder of Abraham Lincoln, etc., respectfully 
represent that the commission have been constrained to 
find Mary E. Surratt guilty, upon the testimony, of the 
assassination of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the 
United States, and to pronounce upon her, as required by 
law, the sentence of death; but in consideration of her age 
and sex, the undersigned pray your Excellency, if it is 
consistent with your sense of duty, to commute her sen- 
tence to imprisonment for life in the penitentiary." 

On February 11th, when the Holt-Johnson controversy 
was raging at its bitterest, Judge Holt wrote to Hon. John 
A. Bingham, one of his special Assistant- Judge- Advocates 
during the Conspiracy Trial, saying that he had personally 
presented the record of the trial and the findings of the 
Commission to the President, and called his attention to the 
recommendation for clemency, "and he read it in my 
presence." ("The Assassination of Lincoln," by T. M. 

327 



328 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

Harris, p. 408.) As this left only Holt's word against 
Johnson's, Holt was anxious to get the statement of some 
one else who knew that Johnson had seen and refused the 
plea. Judge Bingham replied that he had called the 
attention of Stanton to the recommendation for mercy, 
and that after Johnson denied having seen it, he (Bingham) 
called at Holt's office and asked for the papers in the case, 
finding the petition of the five commissioners attached. 
He also asked Secretaries Stanton and Seward if this 
petition had been presented to the President, and they said 
it had been duly considered by him and his advisers before 
the death-sentence of Mrs. Surratt was approved. 
Stanton refused, however, to let Bingham make this state- 
ment public. Attorney- General Speed wrote to Judge 
Holt in March, 1873, that he had seen the record of the 
Conspiracy Trial in the President's office, and the petition 
of the five commissioners was attached to it. But Mr. 
Speed would not say if the matter was discussed in Cabinet 
meeting. Hon. James Harlan remembered hearing the 
plea for clemency discussed by members of the Cabinet 
in the presence of President Johnson, not in regular meet- 
ing, but when there were "not more than three or four 
members present — Mr. Seward, Mr. Stanton, and myself, 
and probably Attorney-General Speed and others — but I 
distinctly remember only the first two." He said he 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 329 

heard "one of these eminent statesmen" urge upon the 
President that clemency in this case "would amount to an 
invitation to assassins hereafter to employ women as their 
instruments." (Harris, p. 409.) 

General Mussey, Johnson's private secretary, remem- 
bered that on Wednesday morning, July 5th, the President 
told him he "was going to look over the findings of the 
court with Judge Holt, and should be busy and could see 
no one." When, two or three hours later, Johnson told 
his secretary he had approved the sentences and ordered 
the execution for Friday, General Mussey asked him if that 
was n't a very short time to give the condemned for prep- 
aration. "He admitted that it was, but said that they 
had had ever since the trial began for 'preparation'; and 
either then or later on in the day spoke of his design in mak- 
ing the time short, so that there might be less opportunity 
for criticism, remonstrance, etc." General Mussey was 
sure (August 19, 1873 — Harris, p. 410) that Johnson 
told him of the recommendation for mercy, but said that 
sex was no proper plea and "there had not been women 
enough hanged in this war." General Henry L. Burnett, 
with John A. Bingham, Assistant- Judge- Advocate for the 
trial, attached the recommendation for mercy to the trial 
records and the findings of the court, and himself carried 
them to Judge Holt. On the fifth of July he happened to 



330 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

be in Stanton's office when Judge Holt came in, and 
remarked that he was just come from going over the find- 
ings with the President. "What did he say about the 
recommendation to mercy of Mrs. Surratt?" Stanton 
asked, and Judge Holt repeated as the President's opinion 
what James Harlan heard "one of the eminent statesmen" 
of the Cabinet urge on him. 

General Henry L. Burnett, at a meeting of the New York 
State Commandery of the Loyal Legion, April 3, 1889, 
delivered a lengthy address in Judge Holt's behalf from 
which all the above excerpts have been taken. In the 
Century Magazine for April, 1890, the Hon. Horatio King 
went over much the same ground, pleading Holt's inno- 
cence of Johnson's charges. In this article he quotes 
General Mussey as saying of Judge Holt's call at the White 
House on the morning of the execution, when Miss Surratt 
was there pleading to see the President, who had just over- 
ruled the habeas corpus plea: "I shall never lose the 
impression made upon me of your (General Holt's) deep 
pity for her (Miss Surratt) and of the pain which her 
distress caused you." The North American Review for 
July, 1888, also contains a statement of Holt's case pre- 
sented in his own pleading with Mr. Speed to speak the 
word that would shatter Johnson's accusation. Stanton 
and Seward were then voiceless in the grave; only Speed 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 331 

could lift the cloud from Holt's name. But though he 
replied most affectionately to Holt's pleadings, he would 
not give the lie to Johnson. Stanton said Holt must 
"rely upon the final judgment of the people," and by this 
final judgment, it is safe to say, Holt is vindicated of the 
charge of keeping back the plea for mercy. He still 
stands, however, accused of the crime of coaching per- 
jurers to swear to the complicity of Jefferson Davis and the 
Southern leaders. 



APPENDIX XXXII 

Johnson's order for execution of payne, atzerodt, 
herold, and mrs. surratt 

The sentences of the eight prisoners were submitted to 
the President on July 6th, by him approved, and that same 
day an order was issued from the Adjutant-General's 
office to General Hancock, commanding him to "cause the 
foregoing sentences in the cases of David E. Herold, 
G. A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, and Mary E. Surratt, to be 
duly executed, in accordance with the President's order." 
(C. T. p. 429.) The President's order was as follows: 

Executive Mansion, July 5, 1865. 

The foregoing sentences in the cases of David E. Herold, 
G. A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, Michael O'Laughlin, 
Edward Spangler, Samuel Arnold, Mary E. Surratt, and 
Samuel A. Mudd, are hereby approved, and it is ordered 
that the sentences of said David E. Herold, G. A. Atzerodt, 
Lewis Payne, and Mary E. Surratt be carried into execu- 
tion by the proper military authority, under the direction of 
the Secretary of War, on the seventh day of July, 1865, 
between the hours of ten o'clock a. m. and two o'clock p. m. 
of that day. 

(C. T. p. 249.) Andrew Johnson, President. 



332 



APPENDIX XXXIII 

Johnson's remark about "the nest that hatched 

THE EGG" 

Johnson's oft-quoted remark about Mrs. Surratt, given 
as his excuse for refusing to commute her sentence " She 
kept the nest that hatched the egg, 1 ' was made on the eve- 
ning of July 7, 1865, to Dr. Butler, who was at the White 
House by appointment with some Tennessee ladies who 
were old friends of the Johnsons. There is a story to the 
effect that Johnson put himself, after signing the death- 
warrant, beyond all appeals for mercy by becoming 
insensibly drunk. Dr. Butler says that if he was 
drunk between Wednesday afternoon and Friday even- 
ing, he was certainly sober at the latter time. Know- 
ing Dr. Butler to have been on the scaffold with Atzerodt, 
President Johnson asked him some questions about the 
hanging, and speaking of Mrs. Surratt expressed himself 
as above. 

Night-clerk Burton of the National Hotel says that at 
one time during the winter of '64-'6o John Booth asked 
him for a room in the hotel to "hold a small meeting in," 

333 



334 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

and Burton told him he could have it. But Booth went 
elsewhere with his meeting — to the Lichau House, 
probably — and Mr. Burton was saved from hanging, he 
thinks, on the same charge of "nest-keeping" that cost 
Mrs. Surratt her life. 



APPENDIX XXXIV 

Johnson's denial of habeas corpus writ to 
mrs. surratt 

On Friday morning the counsel for Mary E. Surratt 
petitioned the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia 
for a writ of habeas corpus, urging the illegality of her 
trial and sentence by a military commission and the 
consequent illegality of her detention by General Hancock 
for execution. At 11.30 Friday morning, while the peni- 
tentiary yard was full of waiting spectators, General 
Hancock, accompanied by Attorney-General Speed, 
appeared before Judge Wylie of the Supreme Court of the 
District, and made the return plea that the body of Mary 
E. Surratt was in his possession " under and by virtue of 
an order" of the President, and "I do not produce said 
body by reason of the order of the President." The order 
was as follows: 

Executive Office, July, 7, 1865, 10 a.m. 

To Major-General W. S. Hancock, Commander, etc.: 

I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, do 

hereby declare that the writ of habeas corpus has been 

heretofore suspended in such cases as this, and I do hereby 

335 



336 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

especially suspend this writ, and direct that you proceed 
to execute the order heretofore given you upon the judg- 
ment of the Military Commission, and you will give this 
order in return to the writ. 

Andrew Johnson, President. 

The Supreme Court of the District ruled that it yielded 
to the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus by the Presi- 
dent of the United States ; and General Hancock proceeded 
to the Arsenal to order the execution. 



\: 



